X-ray-based positioning method for mars entry blackout mitigation

Highlights: • X-rays demonstrate high penetration in the plasma sheath and Martian atmosphere. • The X-ray-based scheme shows good positioning performance in Mars entry blackout. • Improving X-ray signal transmission system performance helps to reduce the error. Enhancing the positional information acquisition during Mars entry blackout improves the Mars landing mission reliability. A positioning method based on the high-penetration of X-rays was developed to solve the problem. The X-ray signal attenuation was estimated. The positioning performance and the influence of X-ray signal transmission system were also evaluated. Results indicated that the X-ray signal attenuation is extremely low, and the X-ray-based method is expected to be a potential application for obtaining high-precision positional information during Mars entry blackout.