SINPLEX: a Small Integrated Navigation System for Planetary Exploration

Abstract

SINPLEX is a research and development project funded by the European Commission. Its main goal is to develop an innovative solution to significantly reduce the mass of the navigation subsystem for exploration missions which include landing and/or rendezvous and capture phases. Future space missions which explore asteroids, comets, planets and planetary moons will likely bring robotic vehicles and may provide the capability to return samples to Earth. For these kinds of missions in particular, mass is one of the most critical factors. In SINPLEX, the system mass is reduced while still maintaining good navigation performance as compared to a conventional modular system. This is done by functionally integrating the navigation sensors, using micro- and nanotechnology to miniaturize electronics and fusing the sensor data within a navigation filter to improve navigation performance. The designed system includes a navigation computer, IMU, laser altimeter/range finder, star tracker and navigation camera and is fully redundant. The objectives of the project are to develop an integrated novel navigation system, produce a breadboard and demonstrate its performance in a hardware-in-the-loop test facility with realistic trajectories. This work provides an overview of the project and presents the current design and status.