Ground simulation of spacecraft motion simulating all six degrees of freedom is a challenging problem due to several features of the natural dynamics in space that are difficult to reproduce on ground. Unlike terrestrial (aerial, land or underwater) vehicles, space vehicles have an overwhelmingly large percentage of their total energy in their translational motion. Dynamical coupling between th...

Thermal plasma measurements from the Dynamics Explorer 1 spacecraft using an aperture bias in the outer plasmasphere and over the polar cap show the existence of cold plasma (T ~1 eV) which may otherwise be hidden from the particle detector by positive spacecraft potentials. Operations of the retarding ion mass spectrometer instrument with the external aperture plane biased up to -8 V with resp...

Autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations between a chaser (or pursuer) spacecraft and a target space object consist of autonomous controlled approach and controlled docking with or controlled capture of the target by the chaser. Guidance, navigation and control problems during autonomous rendezvous and proximity maneuvers between spacecraft are challenging, particularly when the target sp...

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission is a planned gravitational wave detector consisting of three spacecraft in heliocentric orbit. Laser interferometry is used to measure distance fluctuations between test masses aboard each spacecraft to the picometer level over a 5 million kilometer separation. Laser frequency fluctuations must be suppressed in order to meet the measurement require...

The Stanford Space Systems Development Laboratory (SSDL) has initiated the development and integration of a worldwide space control network. This network will serve as a command and control architecture for scholastic and amateur spacecraft. In addition, it will offer a unique real world testbed for the application and validation of advanced autonomous spacecraft operations strategies. The prop...

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) primary mission will be performed by making measurements of the inter-satellite range change between two co-planar, low altitude, near-polar orbiting satellites. Understanding the uncertainties in the disturbance environment, particularly the aerodynamic drag and torques, is critical in several mission areas. These include an accurate estimate...

This paper studies the dynamics of a spacecraft moving in the field of a binary asteroid. The asteroid pair is modeled as a rigid body and a sphere moving in a plane, while the spacecraft moves in space under the influence of the gravitational field of the asteroid pair, as well as that of the Sun. This simple model captures the coupling between rotational and translational dynamics. By assumin...

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the coordinated attitude control problem without velocity measurements. Based on the recently introduced unit quaternion output feedback for the attitude tracking of a rigid body, we present a class of decentralized coordinated control laws to solve the alignment problem for a group of spacecraft within a formation without velocity measurements. The approach...