The Navball as an Intuitive Avionic Instrument for Lunar Landings

Abstract

During all six successful Apollo landings, the piloting crew seized control of the lunar lander and landed manually. Intuitive avionic instruments are required for a safe and precise manual landing on the Moon surface as a contingency scenario. In this paper the concept of the Navball is introduced as the main avionic instrument for manually landing on the Moon. Firstly, telemetry data that is required to safely and manually land on the lunar surface is listed and discussed. How to map the telemetry data onto the Navball using planetary references is then discussed in detail. The mechanisms of why the Navball helps to intuitively and safely land are explained. Different users, including an ESA astronaut, tested the Navball successfully, while repeatedly performing a lunar landing on the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Robotic Motion Simulator (RMS) in a newly developed Human-In-The-Loop controlled lunar landing simulation.