Through the ARP program (ATV Rendezvous Predevelopment), ESA will demonstrate European mastering of the critical technologies involved in the achievement of autonomous rendezvous and docking of the future Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA). In the frame of this program, a GPS-based relative navigation system (RGPS) has been developed for use as the primary navigation reference for the long-range proximity operations (12 km to nearly 300 m). The baseline concept relies on a Kalman filter processing the data received simultaneously from two GPS receivers, one on ATV, and one on ISSA. Performance and robustness of the RGPS filter has been demonstrated by high fidelity simulations. Further validation of this RGPS concept has been performed in an open-loop test campaign carried out at ESTEC GPS-Lab (RGPS filter + actual ARP-GPS + NTC GPS stimulator). The next validation step shall be to process flight data obtained from the ARP-GPS during rendez-vous operations of STS 80 / ASTRO-SPAS. The very satisfactory results obtained in the frame of the above RGPS development and validation activities are presented in this paper.
Relative GPS navigation design and validation for ATV rendez-vous
GPS-Navigations-Systementwicklung und Validation für den automatisierten Transferbetrieb im Weltraum
1997
6 Seiten, 8 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 4 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Relative GPS Navigation Design and Validation for ATV Rendez-Vous
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