PLATFORM: The GMV’s Test-Bench for Formation Flying, RvD and Robotic Validation

This paper describes the first steps for the setting up and exploitation of the PLATFORM test bench. PLATFORM test bench is intended for the ground testing and validation of GNC technologies and sensors for scenarios including synchronized flight of two or more spacecraft (Formation Flying and Rendez-vous and Docking) and it can be eventually extended to cope with the requirements for robotic applications (f.i. cooperative robotic operations on the Mars surface). PLATFORM test bench includes the particularity, with respect to other ground test benches, of allowing the use of real sensor measurements (including most of the error sources present in a space scenario, as transmission delays) obtained through the recreation of a real dynamic profile of spacecraft mock-ups by using an accurate numerically controlled robotic arm. This project has been supported by the Spanish National Space Program. 1.0 INTRODUCTION In the last few years a clear tendency toward distributing the functionality of a single spacecraft among several satellites flying in formation has been shown, the most of the missions planning this kind of approach being characterized by very severe requirements in terms of relative positioning accuracy among involved platforms. Formation flying could be defined as the coordinated motion control of a group of vehicles where the vehicle positions relative to each other are important. In general, the concept of navigation in formation can be applied to any kind of vehicle, like trucks, aircraft, mobile robots, etc. Many future space applications will benefit from using this formation flying technology to perform distributed observations, including: Earth mapping (simultaneous interferometric SAR, magnetosphere), astrophysics (stellar interferometry), and surveillance. The goal is to accomplish these science tasks using a distributed array of much simpler, but highly coordinated, vehicles. This approach represents a new systems architecture that provides many performance and operations advantages, such as: •