RICADOS - Rendezvous, Inspection, Capturing and Detumbling by Orbital Servicing

Abstract

The paper presents a system called RICADOS (=Rendezvous, Inspection, CApturing and Detumbling by Orbital Servicing), a new on-board inspection, rendezvous and robotic system for on-orbit servicing (OOS) and a ground system for operating servicing missions including telepresence tasks. The RICADOS system provides robust and reliable inspection, guidance, navigation and control functionality to approach a target satellite in its orbit, and a robotic sub-system for final capturing and detumbling / stabilization of the target. Further, the RICADOS system does not only consist of the OOS payload. For simulation of the space segment two robotic hardware-in-the-loop test facilities are used: the European Proximity Operations Simulator (EPOS) 2.0 and the On-Orbit Servicing Simulator (OOS-Sim). It includes further a satellite simulator where i.a. the orbital and attitude dynamics are computed. RICADOS also simulates the communication path between space and ground and it contains a ground segment, which equals the ground segment of real missions, such that the operating team can perform tests and trainings from real consoles at the control center. Especially, the most critical phases of such a mission, the final close range approach, the capturing process and the stabilization can be tested within a very realistic environment.