Facility for validating technologies for the autonomous space rendezvous and docking to uncooperative targets

Facility for validating technologies for the autonomous space rendezvous and docking to uncooperative targets

M. Sabatini, G.B. Palmerini, P. Gasbarri, F. Angeletti

Abstract. We present the latest advancements in the air-bearing facility installed at La Sapienza’s GN Lab in the School of Aerospace Engineering. This facility has been utilized in recent times to validate robust control laws for simultaneous attitude control and vibration active damping. The instrumentation and testbed have been restructured and enhanced to enable simulations of close proximity operations. Relative pose determination, accomplished through visual navigation as either an auxiliary or standalone system, is the first building block. Leveraging the acquired knowledge, optimal guidance and control algorithms can be tested for contactless operations (e.g. on-orbit inspection), as well as berthing and docking tasks.

Keywords
Autonomous Proximity Operations, Relative Navigation, Free-Floating Platforms

Published online 11/1/2023, 7 pages
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: M. Sabatini, G.B. Palmerini, P. Gasbarri, F. Angeletti, Facility for validating technologies for the autonomous space rendezvous and docking to uncooperative targets, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 37, pp 458-464, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644902813-101

The article was published as article 101 of the book Aeronautics and Astronautics

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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