Autonomous Rendezvous GNC System Development - Overview and Recent Advances

Abstract

With an increase of space junk in the last years, many new challenges merge in the field of safe and reliable approach to non-cooperative targets in On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) scenarios. This paper gives an overview of the current achievements in development of autonomous rendezvous GNC system and contained components at GSOC’s OOS group. There are visual navigation sensors and corresponding pose estimation algorithms; on-board GNC systems; and advanced onboard computers. Moreover, there is a rendezvous console for interaction with the GNC system. Finally, DLR’s EPOS simulation environment allows to simulate and test the final rendezvous phase starting from 20 m distance. Some promising results of closed-loop tests with 2D and 3D rendezvous sensors are presented and discussed.