Catastrophe

Mission system: MOMO & APPA

Challenge: NASA challenged teams to design a payload that could determine its exact landing zone grid location using only internal sensors and visual odometry. The strict constraints forbade the use of GPS receivers or magnetic compasses.

Design/Execution: The team developed two sensor-fusion payloads, MOMO and APPA, to navigate a GPS-denied environment. The launch vehicle was named Catastrophe. APPA, the primary scored payload housed in the fin can, integrated an IMU, a barometric altimeter, and two side-mounted cameras. The flight software used a combination of image recognition applied to notable landmarks in descent photos and dead-reckoning algorithms driven by IMU acceleration and pressure data to calculate a ballistic trajectory and estimate the landing location. The estimated coordinate was cross-referenced against pre-loaded aerial map data using the camera imagery. During the competition launch, MOMO failed to record usable data due to camera connection issues upon ejection. APPA, however, successfully logged sensor data throughout the entire flight profile. After landing, APPA’s software fused the recorded pressure, acceleration, and imagery data to generate an estimated landing coordinate, completing the mission objective.