Design and development of guidance navigation and control algorithms for spacecraft rendezvous and docking experimentation

This paper presents the design of the GNC system of a ground test‐bed for spacecraft rendezvous and docking experiments. The test‐bed is developed within the STEPS project (Systems and Technologies for Space Exploration). The facility consists of a flat floor and two scaled vehicles, one active chaser and one ‘semi‐active’ target. Rendezvous and docking maneuvers are performed floating on the plane with pierced plates as lifting systems. The system is designed to work both with inertial and non‐inertial reference frame, receiving signals from navigation sensors as: accelerometers, gyroscopes, laser meter, radio finder and video camera, and combining them with a digital filter. A Proportional‐Integrative‐Derivative control law and Pulse Width Modulators are used to command the cold gas thrusters of the chaser, and to follow an assigned trajectory with its specified velocity profile. The design and development of the guidance, navigation and control system and its architecture–including the software algorithms–are detailed in the paper, presenting a performance analysis based on a simulated environment. A complete description of the integrated subsystems is also presented.