Asteroid rotation and orbit control via laser ablation

Vetrisano, Massimo; Colombo, Camilla; Vasile, Massimiliano

doi:10.1016/j.asr.2015.06.035

Cited by 22 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Even more challenging is to navigate a formation of spacecraft, particularly with heterogeneous sensors. Recent work by one of the authors demonstrated the possibility to autonomously navigate a formation of spacecraft around an asteroid with a distributed fault-tolerant autonomous system [1] [2]. The complexity increases even further in the case of a binary system due the interaction between the primary and the secondary asteroid.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Angles-Only Navigation of a Formation in the Proximity of a Binary System

Torre¹,

Serra²,

Grey³

et al. 2018

2018 Space Flight Mechanics Meeting

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This paper will focus on the navigation and station keeping of one or more spacecraft around the dynamic equivalent of the Lagrange point L4 of a binary asteroid system. This location can be conveniently used by a spacecraft equipped with a small scale laser to demonstrate laser ablation as a viable asteroid deflection technology and to extract and analyse surface and subsurface material. This paper proposes an approach using optical navigation only and exploiting the knowledge of the dynamics of the secondary asteroid around the primary. Each spacecraft is equipped with only a camera, a good attitude determination and control system and an inter-satellite link that allows sharing information with other spacecraft in the formation and provides a complete spacecraft-to-spacecraft position vector.Two scenarios will be considered in this study: one in which a single spacecraft uses only information from a camera observing both the primary and the secondary asteroid, in the other, a small formation of spacecraft autonomously navigates using only cameras and an intersatellite link. Measurements and dynamics are processed in a form of Unscented H-infinity Filter that can effectively estimate the state of the system and allows maintaining the formation at L4.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Angles-Only Navigation of a Formation in the Proximity of a Binary System

Torre¹,

Serra²,

Grey³

et al. 2018

2018 Space Flight Mechanics Meeting

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show abstract

“…Independently from the chosen technique, a common problem is represented by the fact that big space items could be tumbling at a relatively high rate at the time the deflection is imparted. In this paper we tackle this detumbling problem by using a laser ablation method, considering the former study of [2], where a laser was used to deflect an asteroid while decreasing its angular velocity. In fact, as it will be shown in Section 2, it is necessary to reduce the angular rate because of the effectiveness of this method is affected by the local surface velocity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detumbling large space debris via laser ablation

Vetrisano

Thiry

Vasile

2015

2015 IEEE Aerospace Conference

Self Cite

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This paper presents an approach to control the rotational motion of large space debris (the target) before the spacecraft starts deflecting its trajectory through laser ablation. A rotational control strategy based on the instantaneous angular velocity of the target is presented. The aim is to impart the maximum control torque in the direction of the instantaneous angular velocity while minimizing the undesired control components in the other directions. An on-board state estimation and control algorithm is then implemented. It simultaneously provides an optimal control of the rotational motion of the target through the combination of a LIDAR and a navigation camera. The instantaneous angular velocity of the debris is estimated through the application of the optic flow technique. The whole control and estimation technique is applied to the case of cylindrical and parallelepiped shapes as representative of upper stages and spacecraft. When applied to the cylindrical shape, results show that the control strategy and laser technique fail to control along three directions unless the geometrical axes are different from the inertial ones. In general the thrust vector is aligned with the normal to the local surface meaning that no control torque can be exerted along the longitudinal axis in the case of an ideal cylinder

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“…This task will be achieved by using a monocular camera and a distance sensor (such as a LIDAR), with no prior knowledge either of the relative pose or of the target's shape. Such a target is clearly more difficult to analyze with respect to the asteroid dealt in [14,15], as its dynamics can be far more complex and fast. The addition of the target's shape reconstruction, not tackled in [16], is significant with respect to inspection tasks and to the need to evaluate target's inertia characteristics and possible locations for a possible grasp or dock.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Johnson and Mathies [14] applied the two-view motion algorithm to a landing maneuver on a small body and made use of an altimeter to compute the scale variation between two images during the descent. Vetrisano et al [15] studied the use of cameras and intersatellite links between a swarm of spacecraft during the rendezvous to an asteroid, to estimate both the relative state and the relative angular velocity of the body. Oumer and Panin [16] presented a camera-based 3D feature tracking method used to estimate the position and velocities of an observed rigid body without reconstructing its shape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pose and Shape Reconstruction of a Noncooperative Spacecraft Using Camera and Range Measurements

Volpe

Sabatini

Palmerini

2017

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

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Recent interest in on-orbit proximity operations has pushed towards the development of autonomous GNC strategies. In this sense, optical navigation enables a wide variety of possibilities as it can provide information not only about the kinematic state but also about the shape of the observed object. Various mission architectures have been either tested in space or studied on Earth. The present study deals with on-orbit relative pose and shape estimation with the use of a monocular camera and a distance sensor. The goal is to develop a filter which estimates an observed satellite's relative position, velocity, attitude, and angular velocity, along with its shape, with the measurements obtained by a camera and a distance sensor mounted on board a chaser which is on a relative trajectory around the target. The filter's efficiency is proved with a simulation on a virtual target object. The results of the simulation, even though relevant to a simplified scenario, show that the estimation process is successful and can be considered a promising strategy for a correct and safe docking maneuver.

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Asteroid rotation and orbit control via laser ablation

Cited by 22 publications

References 13 publications

Angles-Only Navigation of a Formation in the Proximity of a Binary System

Angles-Only Navigation of a Formation in the Proximity of a Binary System

Detumbling large space debris via laser ablation

Pose and Shape Reconstruction of a Noncooperative Spacecraft Using Camera and Range Measurements

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