SYSTEM TEST RESULTS FROM THE GNC EXPERIMENTS ON THE PRISMA IN-ORBIT TEST BED

摘要

The PRISMA in-orbit test bed will demonstrate Guidance, Navigation, and Control strategies for spacecraft formation flying and rendezvous. The project is funded by the Swedish National Space Board and the prime contractor is the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC). The project is further supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and the French Space Agency (CNES). By mid 2009, the project has completed its flight acceptance review and launch is planned for February 2010. PRISMA consists of two spacecraft: MAIN and TARGET. The MAIN spacecraft has full orbit control capability while TARGET is attitude controlled only. The Swedish Space Corporation is responsible for three groups of guidance, navigation, and control experiments. These experiments include GPS- and vision-based formation flying during which the spacecraft will fly in passive as well as forced motion. The three experiments are: Autonomous Formation Flying (AFF), Proximity Operations with Final Approach/Recede Maneuvers (PROX/FARM), and Autonomous Rendezvous (ARV). This paper presents system test results from two of these experiments as obtained with the flight-ready system. The system tests consist of a series of simulations performed on the flight model spacecraft with a large amount of hardware in the loop.