For the next Lunar Landing…

“Engineers at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, are developing a guidance, navigation, and control system for lunar landings that includes an onboard hazard-detection system able to spot craters, slopes, and rocks that could be dangerous to landing craft. In the Apollo missions of 40 years ago, astronauts steered the lander to a safe spot by looking out the window; the lander itself “had no eyes,” says Eldon Hall, a retired Draper engineer and one of the original electronics designers for Apollo’s navigation computer.

That meant there were some close calls with Apollo, says Tye Brady, the technical director for lunar landing at Draper, who demonstrated his team’s automated-landing and hazard-avoidance technology at last week’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11…”

source: technologyreview.com