ATV JULES VERNE: A STEP BY STEP APPROACH FOR IN FLIGHT DEMONSTRATION OF NEW RDV TECHNOLOGIES
- Paper number
IAC-09.B6.2.13
- Author
Dr. Emilio De Pasquale, European Space Agency, France
- Year
2009
- Abstract
On the 3rd of April, 2008, the Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne (ATV-JV) successfully docked to the International Space Station (ISS). ATV is funded by European Space Agency (ESA), designed and developed by ASTRIUM as prime contractor and operated by CNES. For the first time, a European spacecraft has performed a rendezvous with a manned station, demonstrating the correct behaviour of ATV autonomous GNC together with effective on-board RDV trajectory monitoring and abort manoeuvring which are critical functions for guaranteeing ISS crew safety. A set of demonstration objectives has been defined by ESA and trilaterally agreed with ISS international partners. Challenging the fact that ATV was not designed for a demonstration flight, ATV-JV mission has been defined with a step by step approach for demonstrating safety critical functions before using them in critical phases and at the same time providing service to ISS. During free flight the automated Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre (CAM) has been fully demonstrated together with the good health of main GNC HW and SW functions like GPS receivers, orbital manoeuvre and attitude control. During the first ISS proximity operation (Demo Day 1) ATV S/C approached the ISS until a distance of 3500m successfully testing the good functioning of autonomous GNC (based on GPS data from ATV and ISS) and the on board safety monitoring based on a dedicated filter of accelerometers measurements, ATV and ISS GPS PVt solutions. The ESCAPE manoeuvre has been commanded and successfully in flight tested by ATV Control Centre. ESCAPE and CAM assure two levels of autonomous ISS safety reaction in case of off-nominal behaviour or GNC malfunctions, preventing ATV to penetrate ISS safety volume. On the 1st of April, during the second Demonstration Day ATV-JV was authorised to fly until a distance of 11m from ISS, allowing ATV Control Centre to gather RDV sensors data in order to assess the behaviour of Final Approach GNC. The off-line analysis of plots and statistic has shown the excellent control of ATV trajectory within the security corridor which has been confirmed two days after by a flawless RDV until docking with an outstanding trajectory accuracy performance. This paper addresses the definition of demonstration criteria for RDV technologies, its operational implementation and the in-flight results. The performances of the main GNC functions observed during the demonstration operations are here analyzed explaining the characteristics of the dynamics behaviour and the relationship with the RDV trajectory requirements.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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