An Autonomous Space Navigation System Using Image Sensors

Space navigation has been a research topic for decades, with autonomy within its remit being a challenging area. Conventional space navigation approaches are based on utilizing the signal from ground facilities on the earth or using navigation sensors with sophisticated methodologies. Hence, this paper proposes a simple space autonomous navigation system that utilizes the angle measurements obtained by three image sensors. A sensitivity analysis is performed to rigorously investigate the relationship between the sensors’ performance and navigation error. A nonlinear Kalman filter is designed to improve navigation performance due to sensor errors. The performance of the proposed system is verified via nonlinear numerical simulations and Monte-Carlo simulation with sensor errors.