A spacecraft is a typical time-sensitive system, and the characteristics of hard real-time and limited resources make the design of real-time scheduling algorithms particularly crucial in spaceborne operating system. With the development of space technology, onboard computer has transformed from a closed system with a single type of task to an open system with mixed sets of tasks. The system allows new tasks to be dynamically loaded during operation, leading to real-time changes in the types and numbers of tasks, further increasing the difficulty of predicting and the uncertainty of the system. Sporadic tasks are more common in actual system and have special temporal characteristics of releasing by a random frequency, making the schedulability determination more complex than that of other types of tasks. Therefore, we focused on the schedulability of sporadic tasks in spaceborne operating system and first classified the situations in which schedulability needs to be determined. For each preemption case in different situations, corresponding determination strategies were proposed based on Response Time Analysis (RTA). Due to RTA’s high time complexity, we additionally utilized Interference Bound Function (IBF) to judge the schedulability, thus providing flexible choices for system design. By tracking task’s runtime information and analyzing at a finer granularity, our methods reduced pessimism and achieved a better schedulable ratio.

Generating selfie images on the surface of a celestial body poses several challenges, including the position of the robotic arm, camera field of view, and limited shooting time. To address these challenges, the PCMIS (3D Point Cloud Matching Based Image Stitching) algorithm is designed, along with a corresponding shooting plan. This algorithm establishes a correspondence between depth and color information, enabling the generation of stitching views under any given view parameter. Furthermore, the algorithm is accelerated using GPU processing, resulting in a significant reduction in stitching time. The algorithm is successfully applied to generate selfie images for the Chang’e-5 mission.

The mysterious “lunar horizon glow” observed in the 1960s and 1970s was the first space observation possibly related to electrostatic dust transport; however, are there really large amounts of electrostatically transported dust particles in the lunar near-surface space? This is largely an open question at present. Here, we first report the in situ investigation results for the charged dust particles obtained by the charged dust detector onboard China’s Chang’E-5 (CE-5) mission. The results show that, within the detector’s detection limit, there are almost no charged dust particles with charge–mass ratios greater than ~0.24 to ~1.96 C/kg and velocities less than ~0.56 to ~0.07 m/s as the scanning voltage decreases from 80 to 10 mV at the location of ~2 m above the CE-5 landing site as the solar elevation angle elevated from ~41.8° to ~45.0°, under the framework of the dynamic fountain model. Additionally, the upper limit for the amounts of dust deposited on the detector during the exploration period of ~12 h is ~8.0 × 10⁻² μg/cm².

Chang’e-5 explorer successfully acquired lunar regolith core samples from depths of greater than 1 m of lunar surface. This study analyzed the lunar core drilling process based on the telemetry data, image information, and returned samples to optimize the sampling device design and enhance the understanding of the lunar regolith. In particular, a prediction method for the projected drilling path and local terrain fitting of drilling dip angle was proposed based on the flight events recorded during the core drilling process and the image information acquired before, during, and after sampling. The results revealed that the drilling dip angle of Chang’e-5 was approximately 2.3°, and the deviation of the drilling length and depth was less than 2 mm. For continuous drilling, a fusion method based on telemetry data and image information was applied to determine the demarcation point of drilling with and without the lunar soil. The position of the demarcation point implied that the drilling point remained at approximately 6 mm loose soil, thereby lagging the action of the force response. Additionally, a characteristic parameter comparison method was proposed for the lunar and ground drilling to analyze the status of the lunar soil. Furthermore, the analysis results revealed that the majority of the Chang’e-5 drilling samples were derived from 0–73.8 cm below the lunar surface and few samples were extracted below 73.8 cm, as the drilling encountered several rocky regions. Moreover, the drilling point exhibited two prominent stratification variations at ~28.7 cm and ~70 cm below the lunar surface. Ultimately, the preliminary relationship between sample dissected position in soft tube and drilling displacement was analyzed. The segmented estimation results can support research on subsurface lunar soil.