Optical-aided, autonomous and optimal space rendezvous with a non-cooperative target

Performing rendezvous in close-proximity of a non-cooperative target is a challenging task, especially if certain performance requirements have to be met. When maneuvering in hazardous scenarios in order to accomplish either refuelling, inspection, repair or dismissal tasks, optimality and safety are relevant aspects to be sought. Additionally, autonomy is essential in unmanned missions. All these aspects can be achieved through purposely intended Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) architectures. Optimality is obtained by means of the guidance system, that is by a proper optimal trajectory calculation. Safety and accuracy are guaranteed by evaluation of target's relative pose and shape, which is exploited by the navigation system. Among all the possible choices, optical hardware is becoming widely studied for its high accuracy and capability to reconstruct three-dimensional properties of the observed scene. The present work investigates the reciprocal influences between the guidance and navigation subsystems, putting higher focus on how the performance of an optimal rendezvous maneuver with a non-cooperative target can be influenced by the accuracy reached in the pose and shape estimation process. To this purpose, the chaser, or maneuvering spacecraft is considered to be equipped with a single camera and a distance sensor, as this architecture both provides high accuracy and meets mass, power and volume requirements to be implemented on-board a small platform. An algorithm including the optimization process and a purposely built filter, capable of receiving images as inputs and providing evaluation of target's relative pose and shape as output, is implemented and tested in several different scenarios to validate the feasibility of the maneuver.