Prisma - a Formation Flying Project in Implementation Phase
- Paper number
IAC-07-B4.2.09
- Author
Mr. Staffan Persson, Swedish Space Corporation, Sweden
- Coauthor
Mr. Sytze Veldman, Swedish Space Corporation, Sweden
- Coauthor
Dr. Per Bodin, Swedish Space Corporation, Sweden
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The PRISMA project for autonomous formation flying and rendez-vous has passed its critical design review in February-March 2007. The project comprises two satellites which are an in-orbit test bed for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) algorithms and sensors for advanced formation flying and rendezvous. Several experiments involving GNC algorithms, sensors and thrusters will be performed during a 10 month mission with launch planned for the first half of 2009. The project is run by the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) in close cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the French Space Agency (CNES) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Additionally, the project also will demonstrate flight worthiness of two novel motor technologies: One that uses environmentally clean and non-hazardous propellant, and one that consists of a microthruster system based on MEMS technology. The project will demonstrate autonomous formation flying and rendezvous based on several sensors – GPS, RF-based and Vision based – with different objectives and in different combinations. The GPS-based on-board navigation system, contributed by DLR, offers relative orbit information in real-time in decimetre range. This will with sophisticated dynamic filtering provide means to perform robust and precise autonomous formation flying. The RF-based navigation instrument intended for Darwin, under CNES development, will be tested for the first time on PRISMA, both for instrument performance, but also in closed loop as main sensor for formation flying. Several rendezvous and proximity manoeuvre experiments will be demonstrated using only vision based sensor information coming from the modified star camera provided by DTU. Semi-autonomous operations ranging from 200 km to 1 m separation between the satellites will be demonstrated. By the time of IAC the project is well into the system integration and testing phase. The complex GNC software and other high level functionalities that support autonomy specific for the multi-spacecraft mission are validated in a real time simulator environment containing both spacecraft processors and bus systems. Corresponding tests will also be performed on the real integrated S/C H/W using as much hardware in the loop as possible.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-B4.2.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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