PRISMA Swedish In-orbit Testbed for Rendezvous and Formation Flying
- Paper number
IAC-06-D1.2.02
- Author
Mr. Björn Jakobsson, Swedish Space Corporation, Sweden
- Coauthor
Mr. Staffan Persson, Swedish Space Corporation, Sweden
- Year
2006
- Abstract
PRISMA is an ongoing satellite project comprising 2 satellites. The project constitutes an in-orbit test bed for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) algorithms and sensors for advanced formation flying and rendezvous operations. Several experiments regarding manoeuvring and sensor demonstrations will be performed during a 10 months mission time. The project is carried out by Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) in close cooperation with the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), CNES and the Danish Technical University. The project consists of two satellites, one highly manoeuvrable Main satellite and one Target satellite without orbit control. The spacecraft masses are in the order of 150 and 50 kg respectively. The manoeuvre experiments may be sorted out in 3 main categories – Autonomous Formation Flying, Homing and Rendezvous, and Proximity Operations. The Autonomous formation flying will be demonstrated with two sensor systems as separate experiments, GPS system and the Formation Flying Radio Frequency (FFRF) system. The GPS-based on-board navigation system, contributed by DLR, offers relative orbit information in real-time in decimeter accuracy. This will together with advanced dynamic filtering techniques provide means to perform robust and precise autonomous formation flying. The FFRF sensor is an RF-based navigation instrument under development on behalf of CNES and ESA, and will be flown for the first time on PRISMA. Also the FFRF sensor will be used in closed loop in the GNC system for advanced formation flying verification. The Homing and Rendezvous experiments are performed using only optical information from the Vision Based Sensor (VBS). The VBS is a modified star camera system provided by DTU. Semi-autonomous rendezvous operations ranging from 200 km to 1 m separation between the satellites will be demonstrated. Finally, the close range Proximity operations using either visual information or GPS will demonstrate autonomous navigation and control in very close proximity of the Target satellite. The project has reserved a launch as piggyback on Dnepr to a sun-synchronous orbit at 700 km altitude. The launch is planned for 2nd half of 2008. The project is in C/D phase since the beginning of 2006, and progresses according to plan. Major procurements and manufacturing activities have started. The final paper will, apart from a description of the different in orbit demonstrations, report on the project status up to the date of the IAC conference. E.g. the critical GNC software has at that time started complex system testing in simulation environment with a target hardware processor in the loop.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-D1.2.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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