EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION OF GPS AS A RELATIVE SENSOR FOR FORMATION FLYING SPACECRAFT

Tobe Corazzini, Andrew Robertson, John Carl Adams, Arash Hassibi, and Jonathan P. How

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The development of a GPS-based relative position and attitude sensing system in a laboratory environment is presented, with application to spacecraft formation flying. Previous papers have discussed the demonstration of spacecraft rendezvous and capture in two dimensions, in a fully functional indoor GPS environment using simulated spacecraft on an air-bearing table [l]. The work presented in this paper extends the previous GPS- based sensing to a formation of three prototype spacecraft, and experimentally demonstrates very accurate real-time solutions (5 2 cm and 5 0.5 deg errors) for the three relative vehicle positions and attitudes. In addition, candidate estimation architec- tures for the three vehicle formations are studied in simulation. Search-based techniques for carrier-phase integer ambiguity resolution are also demonstrated on simulation data.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 45, Number 3
Pages:	195 - 208
Cite this article:	Export Citation https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-4296.1998.tb02382.x
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