Abstract

With the emergence of the space servicing sector, along with the return of manned missions beyond low earth orbit, there is a need for quick, efficient, and most of all, safe Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO). More than that, the next big step forward is manufacturing in space, which will require large swarms of spacecraft cooperating in close proximity to each other, all subjected to the same laws of orbital mechanics. Methods for swarm RPO safety are being developed but have not yet been tested in space. The most promising type of swarm RPO safety utilizes real-time GNC algorithms coupled with a variety of sensor inputs giving the position, velocity, and pose of all satellites in the swarm, to constantly update the relative-motion orbits of all the elements in the swarm, while propagating these orbits forward in time to prevent conjunctions. The University of Southern California’s Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) is developing an in-house manufactured 3-DOF Air Bearing Platform (ABP), which has the ability to simulate the frictionless environment of space in a single plane. Real-time algorithms for swarm operations are planned to be tested with representative floating platforms. In preparation for platform operations, algorithms developed for swarm RPO were tested in a software simulation of the ABP hardware. Software based verification on the simulated ABP platform allowed for testing of various sensor configurations on the swarm elements, as different trajectories and approaches will have different range variations and rotation rates, all of which determine how well a given sensor can identify and update the position of the …

Date

October 21, 2019

Authors

Rahul Rughani, Lizvette Villafana, David A Barnhart

Journal

70th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Washington DC, United States

Pages

21-25