STATE OF THE ART IN GUIDANCE NAVIGATION AND CONTROL: A SURVEY OF SMALL SATELLITE GNC COMPONENTS

This paper provides a summary of current state of the art components and technologies that are used for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) of small spacecraft. The current state of the art for small spacecraft GNC performance is 1.5m onboard orbital position accuracy using GPS and pointing to better than 0.1 degrees using a combination of reaction wheels, MEMS gyros and a star tracker. Component technology for Earth orbiting missions is mature and all key GNC components are available at TRL 9 from a variety of vendors. Components for deep space small spacecraft missions are relatively immature but are expected to reach high TRL within the next two to three years. Innovation in GNC is focused on miniaturization of existing technology and the development of single vendor integrated attitude determination and control units. This paper is based on the GNC chapter of the NASA Small Spacecraft Technology State of the Art report.