INTERNATIONAL SPACE EXPERIMENT 'STUDY ON APPLICABILITY OF ACTIVE SCANNING LASER DEVICES TO FUTURE SYSTEMS FOR PRECISION PROXIMITY WITH UNCOOPERATIVE SPACE OBJECTS INCLUDING AUTOMATIC MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES'

摘要

The international space experiment (SE) will be conducted on two Russian transport cargo spacecraft (TCS) named "Progress". To complete the SE mission it will be necessary 2 flight-ready assemblages of rendezvous systems, a small target-spacecraft with its launcher container. The main goal of the space experiment (SE) is the study on applicability of active scanning laser devices to future systems for precision proximity with uncooperative space objects including automatic maintenance activities. SE consists of two phases: 1. Study on working efficiency of active scanning laser devices during regular rendezvous with the International space station (ISS) (passive mode). 2. Study on working efficiency of active scanning laser devices in the course of repeated approaches to the target-spacecraft, simulating an uncooperative space object. During the SE realization the following objectives are to be achieved: —capability test of a scanning laser distance measuring instrument employment for the TCS rendezvous with the ISS; —operability evaluation of three-dimensional modeling to control spacecraft rendezvous with the station; —effectiveness test of the scanning laser distance measuring instrument within the control loop of the spacecraft rendezvous with an uncooperative space object; —development and testing of algorithms for automatic rendezvous with uncooperative space objects, validation of software dedicated to automatic rendezvous of an active vehicle with an uncooperative spacecraft; —development of a technologic target-spacecraft simulating an uncooperative space object that is used for real environment testing of maintenance technologies; —implementation of the Russian transport cargo spacecraft "Progress" rendezvous with the target-spacecraft; —opportunity analysis of use of experience (technology) gained for a new generation of manned space systems, including maintenance dedicated vehicles. In the SE a laser rendezvous system is one of the scientific hardware proposed to use, with the following functions presented: -object detection;-determination of distance to the object;-definition of orientation and velocity (state vector) of the object; -formation of the imaginary object ("cloud of points"); -development of a three-dimensional oriented model of the rendezvous object based on the available library of images. The following sections are for each SE phase described: SE description, hardware flow chart, parameters, used for comparative analysis of rendezvous systems. In the report there is also practical relevance of the international SE for near and far space exploration described, and there are also benefits for each SE participant presented.