AI-Enabled Crater-Based Navigation for Lunar Mapping
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866918147890610176 |
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| author | McLeod, Sofia Chng, Chee-Kheng Rodda, Matthew Chin, Tat-Jun |
| author_facet | McLeod, Sofia Chng, Chee-Kheng Rodda, Matthew Chin, Tat-Jun |
| contents | Crater-Based Navigation (CBN) uses the ubiquitous impact craters of the Moon observed on images as natural landmarks to determine the six degrees of freedom pose of a spacecraft. To date, CBN has primarily been studied in the context of powered descent and landing. These missions are typically short in duration, with high-frequency imagery captured from a nadir viewpoint over well-lit terrain. In contrast, lunar mapping missions involve sparse, oblique imagery acquired under varying illumination conditions over potentially year-long campaigns, posing significantly greater challenges for pose estimation. We bridge this gap with STELLA - the first end-to-end CBN pipeline for long-duration lunar mapping. STELLA combines a Mask R-CNN-based crater detector, a descriptor-less crater identification module, a robust perspective-n-crater pose solver, and a batch orbit determination back-end. To rigorously test STELLA, we introduce CRESENT-365 - the first public dataset that emulates a year-long lunar mapping mission. Each of its 15,283 images is rendered from high-resolution digital elevation models with SPICE-derived Sun angles and Moon motion, delivering realistic global coverage, illumination cycles, and viewing geometries. Experiments on CRESENT+ and CRESENT-365 show that STELLA maintains metre-level position accuracy and sub-degree attitude accuracy on average across wide ranges of viewing angles, illumination conditions, and lunar latitudes. These results constitute the first comprehensive assessment of CBN in a true lunar mapping setting and inform operational conditions that should be considered for future missions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_20748 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | AI-Enabled Crater-Based Navigation for Lunar Mapping McLeod, Sofia Chng, Chee-Kheng Rodda, Matthew Chin, Tat-Jun Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Artificial Intelligence Crater-Based Navigation (CBN) uses the ubiquitous impact craters of the Moon observed on images as natural landmarks to determine the six degrees of freedom pose of a spacecraft. To date, CBN has primarily been studied in the context of powered descent and landing. These missions are typically short in duration, with high-frequency imagery captured from a nadir viewpoint over well-lit terrain. In contrast, lunar mapping missions involve sparse, oblique imagery acquired under varying illumination conditions over potentially year-long campaigns, posing significantly greater challenges for pose estimation. We bridge this gap with STELLA - the first end-to-end CBN pipeline for long-duration lunar mapping. STELLA combines a Mask R-CNN-based crater detector, a descriptor-less crater identification module, a robust perspective-n-crater pose solver, and a batch orbit determination back-end. To rigorously test STELLA, we introduce CRESENT-365 - the first public dataset that emulates a year-long lunar mapping mission. Each of its 15,283 images is rendered from high-resolution digital elevation models with SPICE-derived Sun angles and Moon motion, delivering realistic global coverage, illumination cycles, and viewing geometries. Experiments on CRESENT+ and CRESENT-365 show that STELLA maintains metre-level position accuracy and sub-degree attitude accuracy on average across wide ranges of viewing angles, illumination conditions, and lunar latitudes. These results constitute the first comprehensive assessment of CBN in a true lunar mapping setting and inform operational conditions that should be considered for future missions. |
| title | AI-Enabled Crater-Based Navigation for Lunar Mapping |
| topic | Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20748 |