Results of Prisma / Ffiord Extended Mission and Applicability to Future Formation Flying and Active Debris Removal Missions

Several experiments have been performed by CNES during the extended PRISMA mission which started in August 2011. A first session in October 2011 addressed two objectives: (1) demonstrate angles-only navigation to rendezvous with a non cooperative object, (2) exercise transitions between RF based and vision based control during final formation acquisition. A complementary experiment in September 2012 mimicked some future astrometry mission and implemented the manoeuvres required to point the two satellite axis to a celestial target and maintain it fixed during some observation period. In its first section, the paper presents the experiment motivations, describes its main design features including the guidance and control algorithms evolutions and provides a synthesis of the most significant results along with a discussion of the lessons learned. In the last part, the paper evokes the applicability of these experiment results to some active debris removal mission concept that is currently being studied. The analysis focuses on the re-use of demonstrated functionalities and collected metrology data to maximize ground simulation representativeness and help to extrapolate the level of achievable performances in a different mission context.