Description:
The Research component of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Class Grant and Contribution Program to support Research, Awareness and Learning in Space Science and Technology provides financial support to organizations to conduct space related research and development in priority areas. It will support targeted knowledge development and innovation to sustain and enhance the Canadian capacity to use space to address national needs and priorities in the future.
More specifically, this project entitled "" Relative Navigation for Active Debris Removal "" has the objective (s):
The solution put forward involves the use of active sensors to measure the relative pose of debris. However, this measurement contains sensor noise. Furthermore, it does not directly provide information regarding the angular rate or the velocity of the target, information which is critical to the proximity and synchronisation operations. Since the sensor in itself does not provide a complete measurement of all the critical states, the estimation of the complete relative state vector needs to be performed by software functions, from a succession of relative pose measurements provided by the sensor. It is the purpose of the proposed project to design and test a Relative Navigation State Estimation Software (RENSES) system and to quantify its level of performance for a realistic operational scenario.
The debris removal scenario, for which the properties of the target and its dynamical conditions are unknown, is by far the most challenging scenario. However the RENSES system will also prove extremely valuable to all missions involving proximity operations with cooperative or non-cooperative targets or autonomous rendezvous operations.
Another critical technology NGC wants to develop as part of this project consists in Automated Tools for Tuning of State-Estimation (Kalman) Software (ATTSES).