An Analysis of Feature Detectors Usage in the Task of Lunar Crater Detection

Interest to Lunar surface exploration is growing constantly. A lot of automatic missions have been successfully completed and a series is planned for next decade. Precise navigation of Lunar landing module in automatic mode is one of the most complicated tasks of any Lunar mission. Visual based navigation added by Inertial reference system is a key method for starship landing in unknown environment. In the paper we analyze the most frequently used feature detectors in the task of Lunar crater detection. Visual based navigation methods are based on features detection in image or radio altimeter data and their usage during spacecraft localization. Accuracy of feature detection specifies positioning performance of a total system. Speeded Up Robust Features detector, Maximally Stable Extremal Regions detector, Harris detector, and Minimum Eigenvalue detector have been studied for usage with laser altimeter data of Lunar surface.