DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A GNC ALGORITHM USING A STEREOSCOPIC IMAGING SENSOR IN CLOSE PROXIMITY OPERATIONS

The stereoscopic imaging system used for conducting proximity operations with an inspector satellite near a noncooperative resident space object is validated using AGI's Systems Tool Kit and the MATLAB environment. The guidance, navigation, and control algorithms of the system are implemented using MATLAB, while an STK scenario acts as the truth model and provides the algorithms with sensor data. STK is also used for the graphical modeling and visualization. The stereoscopic imaging cameras are modeled in STK as conical sensors with specified fields of view. Custom angles created in STK then provide real time bearing angle data to the navigation filter, which determines the position, velocity, and attitude of the inspector satellite and the relative position and velocity of the nRSO using complementary sensor data. These data are also extracted from the STK model through the MATLAB/Connect data provider commands, and include magnetometer, IMU, GPS, and Sun sensor data.