ESA’s Guidance, Navigation, and Control Development Environment for Launch Vehicles

Paper number

IAC-07-C1.I.12

Author

Ms. Ana Blasco, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands

Coauthor

Dr. Guillermo Ortega, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands

Coauthor

Mr. Edgar Milic, GMV S.A., Spain

Coauthor

Mr. John Reid, SciSys Ltd, United Kingdom

Year

2007

Abstract

During the last years, a whole spectrum of new launch vehicles for space transportation have been studied at the ESA, NASA, and JAXA space agencies. The European Space Agency has now development programs in which launch vehicles play a major role: the ongoing Ariane-5 enhancement, the VEGA development, the future launchers preparatory programme (FLPP), and the Planetary Exploration programme.

Within the development environment of launchers, ESA is placing particular effort to reduce the time and cost of launch vehicle design projects. Launch vehicle design involves the work of many disciplines, including guidance, navigation, and control subsystems. All disciplines are inter-related and must be designed concurrently under the gear of several design cycles.

ESA initiated an activity in 2005 related to the development of a Guidance, Navigation, and Control Development Environment Tool. It deals with the coding and integration of the selected GNC algorithm(s) and building blocks into a flexible and modular development environment. The code name for this ESA activity is GNC-LV and this paper explains the European Space Agency efforts to design, develop, build, test, and verify such GNC Development Environment Tool.

The main objective of GNC-LV is to provide with a frame of work (procedures, standards, software, hardware) to facilitate the analysis, design, development, integration, testing, verification, and validation of a guidance, navigation, and control subsystem of launch vehicles (re-usable and expendables). It focuses on vehicles for 3 initial planets: the Earth, the Moon, and Mars and it allows the design and integration of models such as: sensors and actuators, propulsion models, vehicle characteristics models, environmental modelling, feedback guidance algorithms for vertical and horizontal movement, flight control techniques, the aerodynamic databases for the vehicles, a main program that control the simulation evolution and the plants models (kinematics and dynamics). 

GNC-LV also comprises the test benching integration. This integration will allow the user the possibility of the coding of the on-board GNC laws that could be further downloaded to the target processor for the real-time test benching implementation. 

All these features will provide the GNC-LV Development Environment tool with the appropriate capability to quickly design a GNC sub-system of a launch vehicle reducing then the time and cost of launch vehicle design process.

Abstract document

IAC-07-C1.I.12.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-07-C1.I.12.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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