The Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) subsystem is a dynamics, guidance, navigation, and control software unit based on commercial-off-the-shelf avionics, which is distributed and deployed on a cluster of cooperative nanosatellites to enable future exploration missions to near-Earth objects (NEOs). ANS allows multiple nanosatellites to act together as a single large spacecraft through radio-frequency (RF) cross-links, optical navigation, and low-thrust control. In particular, ANS-equipped nanosatellites can utilize images of a NEO taken from multiple viewpoints to achieve stereo-vision capabilities and characterize the target body’s shape, gravity field, and dynamical properties. All this is enabled by the fusion of major advances to the state of the art in the astrodynamics of relative motion, RF and vision-based navigation, as well as low-thrust control.
Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) Using Radio Frequency and Optical Navigation: A Distributed Approach to Low-Cost Small Body Exploration
Interplanetary Small Satellite Conference ; 2018 ; Pasadena, CA, US
Conference paper
No indication
English
Low-cost distributed multifunction radio frequency (MFRF) swarming unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)
European Patent Office | 2021
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