Simulation Infrastructure for Autonomous Vision-Based Navigation Technologies

Vision-based navigation technologies are currently under development in order to support future planetary exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and small bodies. By tracking landmarks and local features on the surface of celestial bodies, these technologies will provide GPS-like spacecraft localization capabilities and enable precision orbiting and/or landing toward known targets of interest. In order to contribute to the development roadmap of these technologies, this paper will present the Simulation Infrastructure for Autonomous Navigation technologies (SIAN) aiming at simulating with hardware-in-the-loop and high repeatability vision-based terrain relative navigation algorithms. This scaled simulation infrastructure aims at bridging the gap between pure software simulations and expensive helicopter or rocket-based flight tests. This paper will present the main objectives of this innovative and unique simulation infrastructure and report its conceptual and detailed design.