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At least 73 records · Page 4

A Multi-Function Guidance, Navigation and Control System for Future Earth and Space Missions

Over the past several years the Guidance, Navigation and Control Center (GNCC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has actively engaged in the development of advanced GN&C technology to enable future Earth and Space science missions. The Multi-Function GN&C System (MFGS) design presented in this paper represents the successful coalescence of several discrete GNCC hardware and software technology innovations into one single highly integrated, compact, low power and low cost unit that simultaneously provides autonomous real time on-board attitude determination solutions and navigation solutions with accuracies that satisfy many future GSFC mission requirements. The MFGS is intended to operate as a single self-contained multifunction unit combining the functions now typically performed by a number of hardware units on a spacecraft. However, recognizing the need to satisfy a variety of future mission requirements, design provisions have been included to permit the unit to interface with a number of external remotely mounted sensors and actuators such as magnetometers, sun sensors, star cameras, reaction wheels and thrusters. The result is a highly versatile MFGS that can be configured in multiple ways to suit a realm of mission-specific GN&C requirements. It is envisioned that the MFGS will perform a mission enabling role by filling the microsat GN&C technology gap. In addition, GSFC believes that the MFGS could be employed to significantly reduce volume, power and mass requirements on conventional satellites.

Gambino, Joel↗

The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) Guidance, Navigation, and Control Hardware Suite

The on-orbit success of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) Guidance, Navigation, and Control System can partially be attributed to the performance of a hardware suite chosen to meet the complex attitude determination and control requirements of the mission. To meet these requirements, a diverse set of components was used. The set included two Lockheed Martin AST-201 star trackers, two Kearfott Two-Axis Rate Assemblies mounted to provide X, Y and redundant Z-axis rates, two Adcole Digital Sun Sensor heads sharing one set of electronics, twelve Adcole Coarse Sun Sensor eyes, three Ithaco E-sized Reaction Wheel Assemblies, a Propulsion Subsystem that employed eight Primex Rocket Engine Modules, and a pair of Goddard-designed Attitude Control Electronics which connect all of the components to the spacecraft processor. The performance of this hardware is documented, as are some of the spacecraft accommodations and lessons learned that came from working with this particular set of hardware.

Ward, David K.↗

Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control Visualization Tool

G-View is a 3D visualization tool for supporting spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) simulations relevant to small-body exploration and sampling (see figure). The tool is developed in MATLAB using Virtual Reality Toolbox and provides users with the ability to visualize the behavior of their simulations, regardless of which programming language (or machine) is used to generate simulation results. The only requirement is that multi-body simulation data is generated and placed in the proper format before applying G-View.

Mandic, Milan↗

Space shuttle guidance, navigation and control design equations, volume 1

Revised documentation is presented pertaining to the computation requirements for guidance, navigation, and control of the space shuttle orbiter vehicle. Separate sections cover the following areas; (1) reference documents, (2) GN and C system description, (3) GN and C software functional requirements, and (4) coordinate systems and transformations.

Cox, K. J.↗

Guidance, navigation, and control subsystem for the EOS-AM spacecraft

This paper presents the preliminary design of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) subsystem for the EOS-AM spacecraft and specifically focuses on the GN&C Normal Mode design. First, a brief description of the EOS-AM science mission, instruments, and system-level spacecraft design is provided. Next, an overview of the GN&C subsystem functional and performance requirements, hardware, and operating modes is presented. Then, the GN&C Normal Mode attitude determination, attitude control, and navigation systems are detailed. Finally, descriptions of the spacecraft's overall jitter performance and Safe Mode are provided.

Linder, David M.↗

Integrated guidance, navigation and control verification plan primary flight system

The verification process and requirements for the ascent guidance interfaces and the ascent integrated guidance, navigation and control system for the space shuttle orbiter are defined as well as portions of supporting systems which directly interface with the system. The ascent phase of verification covers the normal and ATO ascent through the final OMS-2 circularization burn (all of OPS-1), the AOA ascent through the OMS-1 burn, and the RTLS ascent through ET separation (all of MM 601). In addition, OPS translation verification is defined. Verification trees and roadmaps are given.

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Guidance, Navigation, and Control Performance for the GOES-R Spacecraft

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R) is the first of the next generation geostationary weather satellites. The series represents a dramatic increase in Earth observation capabilities, with 4 times the resolution, 5 times the observation rate, and 3 times the number of spectral bands. GOES-R also provides unprecedented availability, with less than 120 minutes per year of lost observation time. This paper presents the Guidance Navigation & Control (GN&C) requirements necessary to realize the ambitious pointing, knowledge, and Image Navigation and Registration (INR) objectives of GOES-R. Because the suite of instruments is sensitive to disturbances over a broad spectral range, a high fidelity simulation of the vehicle has been created with modal content over 500 Hz to assess the pointing stability requirements. Simulation results are presented showing acceleration, shock response spectra (SRS), and line of sight (LOS) responses for various disturbances from 0 Hz to 512 Hz. Simulation results demonstrate excellent performance relative to the pointing and pointing stability requirements, with LOS jitter for the isolated instrument platform of approximately 1 micro-rad. Attitude and attitude rate knowledge are provided directly to the instrument with an accuracy defined by the Integrated Rate Error (IRE) requirements. The data are used internally for motion compensation. The final piece of the INR performance is orbit knowledge, which GOES-R achieves with GPS navigation. Performance results are shown demonstrating compliance with the 50 to 75 m orbit position accuracy requirements. As presented in this paper, the GN&C performance supports the challenging mission objectives of GOES-R.

Control↗

Description of the attitude control, guidance and navigation space replaceable units for automated space servicing of selected NASA missions

Control elements such as sensors, momentum exchange devices, and thrusters are described which can be used to define space replaceable units (SRU), in accordance with attitude control, guidance, and navigation performance requirements selected for NASA space serviceable mission spacecraft. A number of SRU's are developed, and their reliability block diagrams are presented. An SRU assignment is given in order to define a set of feasible space serviceable spacecraft for the missions of interest.

Chobotov, V. A.↗

Space shuttle guidance, navigation and control design equations. Volume 3: Orbital operations

Revised specifications are presented of the equations necessary to perform the guidance, navigation, and control onboard computation functions for the space shuttle orbiter vehicle. The orbital operations covered include: (1) orbital coast, (2) orbital powered flight, (3) rendezvous mission phase, (4) station keeping mission phase, (5) docking and undocking, and (6) docked operations.

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Simulation of Guidance, Navigation, and Control Systems for Formation Flying Missions

Concepts for missions of distributed spacecraft flying in formation abound. From high resolution interferometry to spatially distributed in-situ measurements, these mission concepts levy a myriad of guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) requirements on the spacecraft/formation as a single system. A critical step toward assessing and meeting these challenges lies in realistically simulating distributed spacecraft systems. The Formation Flying TestBed (FFTB) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Guidance, Navigation, and Control Center is a hardware-in-the-loop simulation and development facility focused on GNC issues relevant to formation flying systems. The FFTB provides a realistic simulation of the vehicle dynamics and control for formation flying missions in order to: (1) conduct feasibility analyses of mission requirements, (2) conduct and answer mission and spacecraft design trades, and (3) serve as a host for GNC software and hardware development and testing. The initial capabilities of the FFTB are based upon an integration of high fidelity hardware and software simulation, emulation, and test platforms developed or employed at GSFC in recent years, including a high-fidelity Global Positioning System (GPS) simulator which has been a fundamental component of the GNC Center's GPS Test Facility. The FFTB will be continuously evolving over the next several years from a tool with capabilities in GPS navigation hardware/software-in-the-loop analysis and closed loop GPS-based orbit control algorithm assessment. Eventually, it will include full capability to support all aspects of multi-sensor, absolute and relative state determination and control, in all (attitude and orbit) degrees of freedom, as well as information management for satellite clusters and constellations. A detailed description of the FFTB architecture is presented in the paper.

Burns, Rich↗

Supporting Development of Satellite's Guidance Navigation and Control Software: A Product Line Approach

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Flight Software Branch (FSB) is developing a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Flight Software (FSW) product line. The demand for increasingly more complex flight software in less time while maintaining the same level of quality has motivated us to look for better FSW development strategies. The GNC FSW product line has been planned to address the core GNC FSW functionality very similar on many recent low/near Earth missions in the last ten years. Unfortunately these missions have not accomplished significant drops in development cost since a systematic approach towards reuse has not been adopted. In addition, new demands are continually being placed upon the FSW which means the FSB must become more adept at providing GNC FSW functionality's core so it can accommodate additional requirements. These domain features together with engineering concepts are influencing the specification, description and evaluation of FSW product line. Domain engineering is the foundation for emerging product line software development approaches. A product line is 'A family of products designed to take advantage of their common aspects and predicted variabilities'. In our product line approach, domain engineering includes the engineering activities needed to produce reusable artifacts for a domain. Application engineering refers to developing an application in the domain starting from reusable artifacts. The focus of this paper is regarding the software process, lessons learned and on how the GNC FSW product line manages variability. Existing domain engineering approaches do not enforce any specific notation for domain analysis or commonality and variability analysis. Usually, natural language text is the preferred tool. The advantage is the flexibility and adapt ability of natural language. However, one has to be ready to accept also its well-known drawbacks, such as ambiguity, inconsistency, and contradictions. While most domain analysis approaches are functionally oriented, the idea of applying the object-oriented approach in domain analysis is not new. Some authors propose to use UML as the notation underlying domain analysis. Our work is based on the same idea of merging UML and domain analysis. Further, we propose a few extensions to UML in order to express variability, and we define precisely their semantics so that a tool can support them. The extensions are designed to be implemented on the API of a popular industrial CASE tool, with obvious advantages in cost and availability of tool support. The paper outlines the product line processes and identifies where variability must be addressed. Then it describes the product line products with respect to how they accommodate variability. The Celestial Body subdomain is used as a working example. Our results to date are summarized and plans for the future are described.

McComas, David↗

Guidance, Navigation and Control for the Entry, Descent, and Landing of the Mars 2020 Mission

This paper presents an overview of the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system for the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) phases of the Mars 2020 Mission. The EDL GNC system adds Terrain Relative Navigation to the MSL EDL GNC system1 to enable landing on landing sites with landing hazards within the landing ellipse. This paper describes the GNC architecture, including sensors, actuators and algorithms, for the entry, parachute descent, and powered flight phases of the mission.

Brugarolas, Paul↗

Contributions to the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference

This report contains six papers presented by the Lincoln Laboratory Air Traffic Control Systems Group at the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) conference on 6-9 August 2001 in Montreal, Canada. The work reported was sponsored by the NASA Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT) program and the FAA Free Flight Phase 1 (FFP1) program. The papers are based on studies completed at Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with staff at NASA Ames Research Center. These papers were presented in the Air Traffic Automation Session of the conference and fall into three major areas: Traffic Analysis & Benefits Studies, Weather/Automation Integration and Surface Surveillance. In the first area, a paper by Andrews & Robinson presents an analysis of the efficiency of runway operations at Dallas/Ft. Worth using a tool called PARO, and a paper by Welch, Andrews & Robinson presents a delay benefit results for the Final Approach Spacing Tool (FAST). In the second area, a paper by Campbell, et al describes a new weather distribution systems for the Center/TRACON Automation System (CTAS) that allows ingestion of multiple weather sources, and a paper by Vandevenne, Lloyd & Hogaboom describes the use of the NOAA Eta model as a backup wind data source for CTAS. Also in this area, a paper by Murphy & Campbell presents initial steps towards integrating weather impacted routes into FAST. In the third area, a paper by Welch, Bussolari and Atkins presents an initial operational concept for using surface surveillance to reduce taxi delays.

Campbell, S. D.↗

Mars 2020 Perseverance Entry Descent and Landing Guidance Navigation and Control

On February 18th, 2021, NASA landed Perseverance on the Jezero crater (Mars). This paper presents an overview of the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system for the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) phases of the Mars 2020 Mission. It describes the GNC architecture, including sensors, actuators and algorithms. It takes the perspective of the GNC mode commander and shows its as-flown performance.

Brugarolas, Paul↗

Autonomous guidance, navigation and control bridging program plan

A four-center NASA team has undertaken to develop and demonstrate mature technologies applicable to autonomous guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems for application to the National Space Transportation System in full cognizance of its operational, safety, and performance requirements, as well as its cost constraints. Attention is to be given to GNC launch/landing weather assessment, ascent guidance, ascent load relief, and system failure during ascent. Preliminary results indicate that a ground-computed atmospheric steering profile can achieve near-optimum performance as well as high cost effectiveness.

Mcswain, G. G.↗

Guidance, navigation, and control systems performance analysis: Apollo 13 mission report

The conclusions of the analyses of the inflight performance of the Apollo 13 spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control equipment are presented. The subjects discussed are: (1) the command module systems, (2) the lunar module inertial measurement unit, (3) the lunar module digital autopilot, (4) the lunar module abort guidance system, (5) lunar module optical alignment checks, and (6) spacecraft component separation procedures.

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