End-to-End Testing of Rendezvous Maneuvers for On-Orbit Servicing

Abstract

In this talk an end-to-end testing environment for rendezvous is presented. DLR operates the European Proximity Operations Simulator (EPOS) 2.0 for hardware-in-the-loop simulations of the close range rendezvous phase in on-orbit servicing missions. Different rendezvous sensors such as monocular cameras, distance cameras and LiDAR sensors can be tested in a very realistic simulation environment. The features of the test facilities are presented, and an introduction to the developed on-board guidance, navigation and control system is given. Finally, it is shown how the rendezvous system is integrated and tested within an end-to-end simulation framework at DLR-GSOC (German Space Operations Center). In this framework, the ground segment has been established as for a real mission and the space segment is simulated using software and hardware-in-the-loop facilities.