Over a thousand CubeSats have been launched so far and the rate has been exponentially increasing. NASA has been exploring the use of CubeSats for applications beyond low earth orbits (LEO) with the CubeSats around the moon as part of the Artemis missions. With recent advancements in the field of electronics, miniaturized devices are gaining capability to achieve the scientific capabilities with the same accuracy and efficiency as the much larger devices at a fraction of the cost. CubeSats have a much larger potential that is still untapped, especially in the field of distributed systems for on-orbit servicing as well as inspace assembly, so that they can be assembled on-orbit into a larger fractionated satellite or rearranged into specialized modules. These limitations can be traced down to limited advancement of rendezvous, docking and assembly of small satellites in space. We propose a two stage CubeSat docking system that utilizes a system of LED lights and light detectors to identify the target docking CubeSat via active lighting cues, a ranging system to give input to thrusters and perform rendezvous, a modified cone and probe mating pair system that is capable of correcting for orientation misalignment by virtue of their modified geometry, and a hard locking mechanism to engage and disengage the docking CubeSats for transfer of goods and services inbetween CubeSats, with the hard locking mechanism being controllable by the operator to engage and disengage at the operator’s discretion. The active lighting cues consist of blinking LEDs on the external surfaces of the CubeSats, with different blinking frequencies corresponding to messages regarding the relative positions of the CubeSats. The LED blinks are detected and the blink frequency and corresponding message determined by light to digital converters. Once the relative positions of the target CubeSat is determined, propulsion systems such as cold gas thrusters are used to perform rendezvous with the directional assistance from the active lighting cues. In this paper, we shall discuss the experimental results of testing of using active lighting cues to perform target identification in a relevant environment. We perform comparisons of various wavelengths, power draw, positions of LED lights in the CubeSats and aim to obtain relations between power draw for each wavelength and maximum identification distance between the two targets in a lab environment. We also identify the possible shortcomings of this method and technology advancements needed to take this concept to higher TRL and eventually to in-space environment conditions.


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    Titel :

    LABORATORY EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF LIGHTING CUES FOR ON-ORBIT RENDEZVOUS AND DOCKING FOR SMALL SPACECRAFT


    Beteiligte:
    Sandnas, Matt (Herausgeber:in) / Spencer, David B. (Herausgeber:in) / Raj, Athip Thirupathi (Autor:in) / Dinkel, Anna (Autor:in) / Thangavelautham, Jekan (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2024-01-01


    Format / Umfang :

    14 pages





    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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