Objective
On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) is flourishing. According to the EU future space ecosystem, autonomous servicing satellites are needed to revolutionize the use of near-Earth orbits, and to ensure space sustainability. Indeed, autonomy is a key asset to reduce operational cost from ground operators, but also to enable more complex and essential in-orbit tasks (satellite refueling, debris removal). The human-in-the-loop approach induces inevitable delays in the satellite operational loop, especially on the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) subsystem, making it unable to complete critical tasks with guaranteed precision and safety. Nowadays, satellites are equipped with onboard vision sensors to compute and execute autonomously their operational task, yet, these tasks are still relatively simple. The project TANGO (Task-based visual Autonomous Navigation and Guidance in uncooperative close-proximity Operations) aims to couple event-based and RGB (Red Green Blue)-based vision to allow satellites sensing rapidly and accurately their environment, to select and track a target satellite, and to operate vision-based guidance for solving challenging, if not currently impossible, operational tasks in low Earth Orbit (LEO), free of human intervention.
The main objectives of TANGO are first to develop a fast relative navigation algorithm to enable closed-loop vision-based guidance, and to develop a stable and robust visual servoing guidance law to complete on-orbit services. Then, these algorithms will be implemented on space graded hardware to proceed with a complete and credible dynamic validation using cutting-edge optical and robotic facilities to mimic LEO environment. The final target is to provide a proof-of-concepts of on-orbit servicing missions, satellite refueling and satellite removal, both covering a wide type of in-space services, and both being at the heart of current research and industrial questions to enable a sustainable use of the low Earth orbit.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- social scienceslaw
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
20133 Milano
Italy