Development and hardware-in-the-loop test of a guidance, navigation and control system for on-orbit servicing

•A guidance, navigation and control method for rendezvous is proposed.•A modified Kalman filter can handle delayed measurements.•The GNC system is embedded into a hardware-in-the-loop simulation.•Measurements from image processing and generated by an operator are supported.

The rendezvous phase is one of the most important phases in future orbital servicing missions. To ensure a safe approach to a non-cooperative target satellite, a guidance, navigation and control system which uses measurements from optical sensors like cameras was designed and developed. During ground-based rendezvous, stability problems induced by delayed position measurements can be compensated by using a specially adapted navigation filter. Within the VIBANASS (VIsion BAsed NAvigation Sensor System) test campaign, hardware-in-the-loop tests on the terrestrial, robotic based facility EPOS 2.0 were performed to test and verify the developed guidance, navigation and control algorithms using real sensor measurements. We could demonstrate several safe rendezvous test cases in a closed loop mode integrating the VIBANASS camera system and the developed guidance, navigation and control system to a dynamic rendezvous simulation.