A Provably Stable Geometric Bayesian Self-Healing Framework for Deep-Space Cyber-Physical Systems: SO(3) Attitude Dynamics, Multi-Physics Energy--Thermal Coupling, and Lessons from the 2025 Lunar Trailblazer Catastrophe

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Abstract

Background: and Motivation. The total loss of NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft in February 2025---caused by a solar-array pointing inversion coupled with cascading fault-management errors---exposed a critical gap in deep-space fault-tolerance: autonomous self-healing architectures that are both mathematically provable and physically faithful. Contributions. We present a unified, closed-form, and fully reproducible self-healing framework with four core contributions: (i) a complete rigid-body attitude model on the special orthogonal group SO(3) with Lyapunov-guaranteed global asymptotic stability (GAS) and input-to-state stability (ISS) under bounded disturbances; (ii) a coupled multiphysics energy--thermal model combining a single-diode solar-cell equivalent circuit, a second-order Thévenin battery model with electro-thermal feedback, and a radiative heat balance that captures eclipse and albedo effects; (iii) a Geometric Model Predictive Controller (Geometric-MPC) on SO(3) with torque, power, and state-of-charge constraints, discretised via fourth-order Runge--Kutta; and (iv) a Bayesian self-healing recovery index (GSHRI) integrating Sobol global sensitivity analysis and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) posterior inference, with full convergence diagnostics. Results: . Applied to authentic Lunar Trailblazer parameters (72 kg mass, 100 Wh battery, 180° pointing-inversion fault), the Geometric-MPC achieves battery SOC recovery to 92.3% (versus total depletion without healing). Sobol analysis identifies fault-detection latency as the dominant uncertainty driver (S_1 = 0.712). Metropolis--Hastings MCMC (N = 10^5 samples, Gelman--Rubin R-hat = 1.002) yields a posterior recovery probability of pi-hat = 0.9992 (95% credible interval [0.9971, 0.9999]), corresponding to GSHRI = 0.999. All derivations, Monte Carlo ensembles, MCMC chains, and TikZ/PGFPlots visualisations are self-contained and reproducible to machine precision. Recommendation: We advocate mandatory certification of GSHRI >= 0.95 through exhaustive adversarial digital-twin testing prior to launch of all Artemis-era and future deep-space missions.

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europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00
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last seen: 2026-05-24T02:00:01.246996+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0