Design and prototyping of PROBA-3 formation flying system. (1st January 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Peyrard, Julien; Olmos, Diego Escorial; Agenjo, Alfredo; Kron, Aymeric; Cropp, Alexander
• Is Part Of: International journal of space science and engineering. Volume 2:Number 1(2014)
• Page Start: 16
• Page End: 34
• Publication Date: 2014-01-01
• Subjects: PROBA-3 -- formation flying system -- GNC -- design -- prototyping autonomy -- future mission -- navigation -- guidance -- control -- integration tests; Space sciences -- Periodicals; Astronautics -- Periodicals; 629.405
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2048-8459

Abstract

This article describes the formation flying system of PROBA-3 as it has been developed and prototyped during phase B of the project. PROBA-3 will demonstrate the formation flying technology along with on-board autonomy for two spacecrafts in highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. After the presentation of the mission scenario, this article describes the architecture and the main modules of this software, showing their specificities to fulfil the mission: failure detection isolation and recovery for formation flying, GNC for formation, GNC for spacecraft, actuators manager, and formation flying manager. Finally, the integration process of the formation flying software is presented along with tests results and their analysis.