Design and development of PROBA-3 rendezvous experiment

•Presents the Rendezvous (RV) Experiment, integrated in the PROBA-3 mission.•Derives a RV profile for highly elliptic orbits.•The RV profile is compatible with stringent position and attitude constraints.•The RV profile is feasible using only vision based, relative navigation.•The achieved developments are a step towards a TRL 8/9 upgrade of the RV technology.

PROBA-3 is a technology demonstration mission with the objective of, among others, raising the Formation Flying (FF) technology up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 8 or 9. The context of this mission has strong synergies with the knowledge areas considered in Rendezvous (RV), namely the fields of GNC, metrology, actuator systems, etc. This common ground between FF and RV allowed for a dedicated Rendezvous Experiment (RVX) to be performed in the scope of PROBA-3. The RVX is based only on camera measurements, and designed for highly elliptical orbits with strong constraints on relative position and attitude. This paper presents the design and development of the RVX experiment, with the goal to demonstrate the feasibility of vision-based RV and to increase the associated TRL.