Year: 2023
Type: preprint
Abstract: Space debris is on the rise due to the increasing demand for spacecraft for com-munication, navigation, and other applications. The Space Surveillance Network (SSN) tracks over 27,000 large pieces of debris and estimates the number of small, un-trackable fragments at over 1,00,000. To control the growth of debris, the for-mation of further debris must be reduced. Some solutions include deorbiting larger non-cooperative resident space objects (RSOs) or servicing satellites in or-bit. Both require rendezvous with RSOs, and the scale of the problem calls for autonomous missions. This paper introduces the Multipurpose Autonomous Ren-dezvous Vision-Integrated Navigation system (MARVIN) developed and tested at the ORION Facility at Florida Institution of Technology. MARVIN consists of two sub-systems: a machine vision-aided navigation system and an artificial po-tential field (APF) guidance algorithm which work together to command a swarm of chasers to safely rendezvous with the RSO. We present the MARVIN architec-ture and hardware-in-the-loop experiments demonstrating autonomous, collabo-rative swarm satellite operations successfully guiding three drones to rendezvous with a physical mockup of a non-cooperative satellite in motion.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Mahendrakar, Trupti, Holmberg, Steven, Ekblad, Andrew, Conti, Emma, White, Ryan T., Wilde, Markus, Silver, Isaac
Institution: Florida Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Nvidia
OpenAlex ID: W4317940258