Design and Testing of Autonomous Distributed Space SystemsDistributed Space Systems (DSS) are an emerging class of mission designs that enable new scientific and commercial opportunities. In order to enable those new opportunities, these systems will need to have significantly expanded autonomous capabilities compared to their single-spacecraft predecessors. In this paper, we present Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA) project, a payload on NASA's Starling spacecraft experiment. We first describe a step-by-step process for characterizing what features are needed in an autonomous DSS, and show how this process applied to DSA. We then describe the Starling mission, a four-spacecraft swarm hosting multiple DSS payloads. We then describe DSA, which will mature in-space networking and autonomous planning technologies to measure topside ionosophere features using data from the Starling spacecraft's GPS receivers. We describe how DSA will coordinate observations of GPS satellites using Starling's underlying communications infrastructure combined with novel DSS technology. The flight validation of DSS technology will provide mature technology to enable future DSS missions.
Document ID
20210016930
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Nicholas Cramer (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Daniel Cellucci (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Caleb Adams (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Adam Sweet (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Mohammad Hejase (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Jeremy Frank (Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Richard Levinson (Wyle (United States) El Segundo, California, United States)
Sergei Gridnev (Wyle (United States) El Segundo, California, United States)
Lara Brown (Wyle (United States) El Segundo, California, United States)
Date Acquired
June 3, 2021
Subject Category
Space Communications, Spacecraft Communications, Command And Tracking