ANTARES: Advanced Navigation Technologies for Autonomous Exploration Missions

Paper number

IAC-08.B4.6.B11

Author

Mr. Carlos Corral van Damme, GMV S.A., Spain

Coauthor

Mrs. Mariella Graziano, GMV S.A., Spain

Coauthor

Mr. Jesus Gil-Fernandez, GMV S.A., Spain

Year

2008

Abstract

Recently, the interest in optical autonomous navigation for space missions has grown significantly. The general trend towards reducing the cost of operations for small interplanetary missions has led to increased levels of onboard autonomy, including the capability of optical autonomous navigation during certain mission phases. For robotic missions to small bodies, such as asteroids or comets, autonomous optical navigation may be required when the characteristic time of the dynamics is much shorter than the round-trip delay in the communications with the Earth: this is the case for landing or impact trajectories. In addition, for manned exploration missions, which still rely on ground-based navigation as the primary option, optical measurements will be used to autonomously compute onboard a back-up navigation solution. These optical autonomous navigation technologies will need to be developed and validated in order to be ready to be used for the next generation of exploration and science missions.

In the last five years GMV has been very active in the area of optical autonomous navigation. In the frame of successive internal, national and ESA’s cosponsored studies, different optical based GNC techniques and algorithms have been designed, traded-off and compared. In particular, the following mission phases have been deeply investigated: interplanetary cruise (heliocentric navigation), far and close approach towards swing-by, fly-by or impact (target-relative navigation), and high or low orbit (central body relative navigation). Three target observation modes are needed for these mission phases: punctual (faint) objects, extended objects, and surface features (landmarks). 

At the scope of validating the implemented algorithms, GMV has developed a test-bench for the design, analysis and bread-boarding of optical autonomous GNC systems. This paper presents the architecture of the test-bench, which is named ANTARES (Advanced Navigation Technologies for Autonomous Exploration Missions), as well as its components, the implemented GNC features and the results obtained for several mission scenarios.

ANTARES is composed of both hardware and software elements. An optical sensor with dedicated optics is stimulated through computer-generated images which are projected on a high-contrast monitor. The installation and the optics are adjusted to simulate both focused and defocused optical sensors, to account for the potential use of navigation cameras or star trackers. Sophisticated image processing algorithms are implemented to process the images and extract the relevant measurements, which are feed into a SW simulator of the GNC. The results presented refer to: 1) the terminal phase of an impact trajectory towards an asteroid, 2) the autonomous targeting and rendezvous for a small spacecraft mission to an asteroid, 3) contingency scenarios for manned exploration missions to the Moon.

Abstract document

IAC-08.B4.6.B11.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.B4.6.B11.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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