METHOD FOR HIGH-ACCURACY POSITIONING OF APPARATUS ON MOON SURFACE AND DEVICE FOR ITS IMPLEMENTATION Russian patent published in 2019 - IPC B64G1/66 G01C21/02 G01C21/24 

FIELD: astronautics.

SUBSTANCE: group of inventions relates to autonomous space navigation of spacecrafts (SC), in particular, on both sides of the surface of the Moon. Method includes measurement in hardware coordinate system of orientation of local vertical at point of SC positioning with onboard vertical sensor, as well as positions of two navigation stars with onboard star sensors. Moment of measurements is recorded in the universal time scale by the on-board time service. Mathematical model of the Moon motion is loaded into the spacecraft on-board computer. According to measurements, it calculates position of local meridian on lunar celestial sphere using equatorial coordinates of navigation stars and poles of the Moon. At that, the spacecraft positioning latitude is calculated as the Moon pole height above the local horizon, and the longitude is the difference between the zero and the local meridians ascents.

EFFECT: achieving high accuracy, efficiency and stealthiness of measurements of spacecraft coordinates in any place on the surface of the Moon.

2 cl, 3 dwg