Preparation of enabling space technologies and building blocks: GNC and Robotic arm combined control

This work presents the results of a research activity performed by a consortium of italian universities under contract with ESA. The study has two objectives: (1) to design navigation and control algorithms of a GNC system for combined control of an autonomous spacecraft equipped with a redundant manipulator with the aim of capturing a target spacecraft; (2) to develop a complete simulation environment used to support the design and testing of the GNC system.

The research activity aimed at the development of relative navigation and combined control algorithms for controlling an autonomous spacecraft equipped with a redundant manipulator used to capture a target spacecraft. Numerical testing of the GNC solution proposed was performed through an accurate and realistic simulation tool. The GNC system shows good performance for all the considered scenarios, although SC3 is the most challenging due to the high rotation rate of the target. The error budget analysis has highlighted the major sources of errors. The Monte Carlo analysis quantified the robustness of the GNC system. The developed GNC technology reached a TRL of 4 through to the numerical validation of the alpha version of the GNC code.