Since the beginning of the Apollo program, spacecraft rendezvous has been considered a central and difficult piece of human space exploration. We investigate GN&C architectures and new strategies to make autonomous rendezvous safer and more efficient. Our work studies the relative dynamics of the vehicles as well as the design of safe and optimal nominal trajectories. Together with the trajectories we formulate guidance laws to fly them. We are particularly interested in solving the relative navigation problem with respect to both cooperative (such as the International Space Station) and uncooperative (such as in a satellite servicing mission) targets. Finally, we perform close loop analysis of the overall trajectories dispersions in order to assess and satisfy all safety and collision avoidance requirements.
Nonlinear Estimation and Autonomy Research