Navigation principles of the Ranger spacecraft.
Launch vehicle guidance, premidcourse orbit determination and midcourse maneuver of Ranger IX spacecraft lunar mission and merger
SPACE NAVIGATION↗
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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Nonlinear attitude control of elastic spacecraft-antenna system
An approach to large angle rotational maneuvers of a spacecraft-beam-tip body (an antenna or a reflector) configuration based on nonlinear invertibility and linear feedback stabilization is presented. A control law u sub d is derived to obtain independent decoupled control of attitude angles, lateral elastic deflections, slopes due to bending and angular deflection due to torsion at the tip of the beam using torquers and force actuators. For the stabilization of the elastic oscillations, a linear feedback control law, u sub s, is obtained based on a linearized model about the terminal state augmented with a servo-compensator. Simulation results obtained for single axis control, for simplicity, show that large slewing and elastic mode stabilization can be accomplished in spite of uncertainty in the system using the total control u = u sub d + u sub s.
Singh, S. N.↗
Effects of Staggering Formation Maneuvers on the Magnetospheric Multi-Scale Mission Trajectories
Formation maneuvering for the MMS mission is accomplished by executing a two-burn transfer for each spacecraft to achieve a set of desired states. Because the same radio frequency is shared by all four spacecraft, only one spacecraft can execute a maneuver at any given time. Therefore, the maneuver execution epochs for the MMS spacecraft must be staggered. The selection of the staggered maneuver sequence has a significant effect on the propellant usage and the spacecraft close-approach profile. A method for selecting a favorable maneuver sequence is proposed and measured in terms of propellant and safety.
Parsay, Khashayar↗
Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission: Mission Status and Initial Science Results
The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission is a component of the NASA Discovery Program. GRAIL is a twin-spacecraft lunar gravity mission that has two primary objectives: to determine the structure of the lunar interior, from crust to core; and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the Moon. GRAIL launched successfully from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on September 10, 2011, executed a low-energy trajectory to the Moon, and inserted the twin spacecraft into lunar orbit on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012. A series of maneuvers brought both spacecraft into low-altitude (55-km), near-circular, polar lunar orbits, from which they perform high-precision satellite-to-satellite ranging using a Ka-band payload along with an S-band link for time synchronization. Precise measurements of distance changes between the spacecraft are used to map the lunar gravity field. GRAIL completed its primary mapping mission on May 29, 2012, collecting and transmitting to Earth >99.99% of the possible data. Spacecraft and instrument performance were nominal and has led to the production of a high-resolution and high-accuracy global gravity field, improved over all previous models by two orders of magnitude on the nearside and nearly three orders of magnitude over the farside. The field is being used to understand the thickness, density and porosity of the lunar crust, the mechanics of formation and compensation states of lunar impact basins, and the structure of the mantle and core. GRAIL s three month-long-extended mission will initiate on August 30, 2012 and will consist of global gravity field mapping from an average altitude of 22 km.
Neumann, Gregory A.↗
Making Debris Avoidance Decisions for ESMO's EOS Mission Set
The presentation will cover the aspects of making debris risk decisions from the NASA Mission Director's perspective, specifically for NASA Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO) Earth Observing System (EOS) mission set. ESMO has been involved in analyzing potential debris risk conjunctions with secondary objects since the inception of this discipline. Through the cumulated years of experience and continued exposure to various debris scenarios, ESMO's understanding of the problem and process to deal with this issue has evolved. The presentation will describe the evolution of the ESMO process, specifically as it relates to the maneuver execution and spacecraft risk management decision process. It will briefly cover the original Drag Make-Up Maneuver, several day, methodical manually intensive, ramp up waive off approach, to the present day more automated, pre-canned onboard command, tools based approach. The presentation will also cover the key information needed to make debris decisions and challenges in doing so while still trying to meet science goals, constellation constraints and manage resources. A slide or two at the end of the presentation, will be devoted to discussing what further improvements could be helpful to improve decision making and future process improvement plans challenges.
debris↗
Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) System Manager
The Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission is an ambitious NASA space science mission in which 4 spacecraft are flown in tight formation about a highly elliptical orbit. Each spacecraft has multiple instruments that measure particle and field compositions in the Earths magnetosphere. By controlling the members relative motion, MMS can distinguish temporal and spatial fluctuations in a way that a single spacecraft cannot.To achieve this control, 2 sets of four maneuvers, distributed evenly across the spacecraft must be performed approximately every 14 days. Performing a single maneuver on an individual spacecraft is usually labor intensive and the complexity becomes clearly increases with four. As a result, the MMS flight dynamics team turned to the System Manager to put the routine or error-prone under machine control freeing the analysts for activities that require human judgment.The System Manager is an expert system that is capable of handling operations activities associated with performing MMS maneuvers. As an expert system, it can work off a known schedule, launching jobs based on a one-time occurrence or on a set reoccurring schedule. It is also able to detect situational changes and use event-driven programming to change schedules, adapt activities, or call for help.
Ground System Expert Automation↗
Cislunar Trajectory Design and Maneuver Autonomy for NASA's Moon to Mars Architecture
NASA’s Moon to Mars architecture is an ambitious roadmap of manned cislunar and deep space exploration. The extensive amount of orbital assets required will place a significant burden on ground-based resources, such as communication networks and operations facilities. Spacecraft autonomy is essential for maintaining a vast number of complex missions beyond Earth orbit. To achieve full autonomy, spacecraft must be able to employ methods of robust maneuver design without an explicit dependence on commands sent from the ground. This level of autonomy is needed not only for stationkeeping, but also for outbound transfers. To address the need of spacecraft maneuver design autonomy, this work investigates the use of neural networks (NNs) in a supervised learning environment. A supervised learning approach for NNs allows for a curated training data set, consisting exclusively of perturbations applied to a desired mission concept of operations (ConOps). The proposed approach allows humans on the ground to design a specific mission ConOps before flight, then employ NNs to fly the mission robustly and autonomously. This investigation numerically tests maneuver autonomy in four highly sensitive regions of flight: orbit raising, translunar injection burns, powered lunar flybys, and invariant manifold insertion burns. These straining cases are contextualized by testing them in a demonstration mission, targeting an Earth-Moon L3 orbit. The study first establishes feasibility by automating impulsive burn maneuvers. However, some guidance algorithms will need more intensive commands, such as inertial pointing and angular rates. To validate this method, NN maneuver autonomy is applied to a finite burn model of the demonstration mission. The use of sequential, mission specific maneuvers provide an appropriate testbed to demonstrate the robustness of a NN trained on feasible perturbed states. Moreover, these scenarios provide preliminary proof-of-concept for fully autonomous missions that execute maneuvers without dependence upon explicit command uplinks. As a result, the technological advancement proposed in this work may significantly ease the strain on ground-based mission operations. This would enable complex and autonomous mission execution in cislunar and deep space regimes, filling a technology gap required to support future manned missions.
NASA↗
Improvements in navigation resulting from the use of dual spacecraft radiometric data
When two interplanetary spacecraft lie along similar geocentric lines-of-sight, navigational advantages may be achieved by navigating one spacecraft with respect to the other. Opportunities to employ this technique will become more common as more multiprobe missions are launched. The two Viking spacecraft and the two Mariner Jupiter/Saturn '77 spacecraft will be within two and three degrees of each other, respectively, for a large portion of their missions. Results of simulated analysis as well as the processing of real tracking data from the two Viking spacecraft reveal the following advantages of the dual spacecraft navigation technique: (1) cancellation of platform parameter and transmission media modeling errors in short arc solutions, (2) accurate encounter guidance for the trailing spacecraft, (3) reduction of total tracking requirements, and (4) rapid determination of the orbit following a maneuver on either spacecraft.
Chao, C. C.↗
Contingency study for the third international Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3) satellite
The third satellite of the international Sun-Earth Explorer program was inserted into a periodic halo orbit about L sub 1, the collinear libration point between the Sun and the Earth-Moon barycenter. A plan is presented that was developed to enable insertion into the halo orbit in case there was a large underperformance of the Delta second or third stage during the maneuver to insert the spacecraft into the transfer trajectory. After one orbit of the Earth, a maneuver would be performed near perigee to increase the energy of the orbit. A relatively small second maneuver would put the spacecraft in a transfer trajectory to the halo orbit, into which it could be inserted for a total cost within the fuel budget. Overburns (hot transfer trajectory insertions) were also studied.
Dunham, D. W.↗
Identification and control of structures in space
Work during the period January 1 to June 30, 1985 has concentrated on the completion of the derivation of the equations of motion for the Spacecraft Control Laboratory Experiment (SCOLE) as well on the development of a control scheme for the maneuvering of the spacecraft. The report consists of a paper presented at the Fifth Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Large Structures, June 12 to 14, 1985 at Blacksburg, VA.
Meirovitch, L.↗
Models for Liquid Impact Onboard Sloshsat FLEVO
Orbital experiments on the behavior of liquid in spacecraft are planned. The Sloshsat free-flyer is described. Preparation of the experiments, and later evaluation, are supported by models of varying complexity. The characteristics of the models are discussed. Particular attention is given to the momentum transfer between the liquid and the spacecraft, in connection with the liquid impact that may occur at the end of a reorientation maneuver of the spacecraft.
Vreeburg, Jan P. B.↗
Maneuver Design and Calibration for the Genesis Spacecraft
The Genesis is the fifth mission selected as part of NASA's Discovery Program.
genesis↗
Maneuver Design and Calibration for the Genesis Spacecraft
Genesis is the fifth mission selected as part of NASA's Discovery Program.
Maneuver↗
Maneuver Automation Software
The Maneuver Automation Software (MAS) automates the process of generating commands for maneuvers to keep the spacecraft of the Cassini-Huygens mission on a predetermined prime mission trajectory. Before MAS became available, a team of approximately 10 members had to work about two weeks to design, test, and implement each maneuver in a process that involved running many maneuver-related application programs and then serially handing off data products to other parts of the team. MAS enables a three-member team to design, test, and implement a maneuver in about one-half hour after Navigation has process-tracking data. MAS accepts more than 60 parameters and 22 files as input directly from users. MAS consists of Practical Extraction and Reporting Language (PERL) scripts that link, sequence, and execute the maneuver- related application programs: "Pushing a single button" on a graphical user interface causes MAS to run navigation programs that design a maneuver; programs that create sequences of commands to execute the maneuver on the spacecraft; and a program that generates predictions about maneuver performance and generates reports and other files that enable users to quickly review and verify the maneuver design. MAS can also generate presentation materials, initiate electronic command request forms, and archive all data products for future reference.
Uffelman, Hal↗
Improvements in navigation resulting from the use of dual spacecraft radiometric data
If two spacecraft lying along similar geocentric lines-of-sight are simultaneously tracked by two nearby ground stations (dual spacecraft two-station tracking), navigational capabilities may be substantially improved. A thorough accuracy analysis study of dual spacecraft tracking using simulated tracking data based on the trajectories of Viking and Mariner Jupiter-Saturn '77(MJS '77) missions has been carried out. Results of the study reveal the following advantages: (1) cancellation of platform parameter and transmission media modelling errors in short arc solutions, (2) accurate encounter guidance for the trailing spacecraft, (3) reduction of total tracking time requirements, and (4) rapid determination of the orbit following a maneuver on either spacecraft. It is shown that dual spacecraft data types can improve navigational capabilities by a factor of 5 to 10, under the conditions of small angular separation (not exceeding 3 degrees) of the two spacecraft and well determined trajectory of the reference spacecraft. The research to carry out and the data to obtain before the new technique can be used in interplanetary navigation are pointed out.
Chao, C. C.↗
A Full Mission Summary (1997-2017) of the Attitude Control Performance during Orbit Trim Maneuvers Performed by the Cassini-Huygens Spacecraft
The Cassini mission was a highly successful 20-year mission to the planet Saturn that launched in 1997 and concluded its mission in September 2017. Over the course of its mission, Cassini executed hundreds of main engine and thruster-controlled ΔV maneuvers. This paper provides an overview of the Cassini maneuvers and provides data on the performance of the attitude controller and maneuver execution errors during these maneuvers. The paper concludes with an appendix documenting the vital statistics for all maneuvers that Cassini performed.
Brown, Todd S.↗
Robust nonlinear attitude control of flexible spacecraft
This paper presents an approach to large-angle rotational maneuvers of a spacecraft-beam-tip body configuration based on nonlinear invertibility and linear feedback stabilization. A control law u sub d is derived for the decoupled control of attitude angles, lateral elastic deflections, slopes due to bending and angular deflection due to torsion at the tip of the beam using torquers and force actuators. For the stabilization of the elastic modes, a linear feedback control law u sub s is obtained based on a linearized model augmented with a servocompensator. Simulation results are presented to show that large slewing and elastic mode stabilization can be accomplished.
Singh, Sahjendra N.↗
Two-Spacecraft Orbiting in Opposition to Enable Bistatic Radar Observations Around an Asteroid
Fundamental answers about the origin and evolution of the Solar System hinge on our ability to image in detail the 3D interior structure of small bodies at highresolution. By collecting radar measurements we can ultimately create 3D maps of the interior structure. In this study we focus our attention on a specific mission scenario which consists of a carrier spacecraft and two daughter spacecraft sent to orbit the asteroid Apophis. The orbits of the spacecraft are optimized to maximize radar measurements by dynamically modeling the harmonics and solar radiation pressure. For long mission durations, orbital correction maneuvers maintain the spacecraft in formation.
Anderson, Rodney L.↗