New Developments in Celestial Dynamics in Strongly Perturbed Environments - Autonomous Rendezvous Technology to Very Distant Objects

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18H01628
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 24010:Aerospace engineering-related
• Research Institution: Japan Aerospace EXploration Agency
• Principal Investigator: Tsuda Yuichi 国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構, 宇宙科学研究所, 教授 (50370101)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 誘導 / 航法 / 制御

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research aims to realize autonomous rendezvous guidance and navigation to very distant celestial bodies. As "needs for high autonomy" and "strong purturbations" are typical characteristics for rendezvous to far distant bodies or to spacecraft flying in the vicinity of such bodies, they are precisely implemented into the dynamical model to build a rendezvous navigation theory, and to conduct numerical experiments. The template matching method with celestial object contours based on the VCC method and the active terrain-relative navigation algorithm that places multiple small artificial landmarks on the surface are proposed as autonomous, reliable, and real-time optical navigation algorithms. The effectiveness of both methods was evaluated using actual observation data from the asteroid explorer Hayabusa2. Progress has also been made in mission conception using these navigation methods and extraction of key technologies for it.

Free Research Field

宇宙工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

世界の宇宙探査の趨勢は，高重力天体や遠方小天体への離着陸を含むミッションである．小惑星探査機はやぶさ２は，小天体離着陸を世界に先駆けて成功させたものの，高々3.6億キロメートルの距離において，地上からの指令にかなり依拠した手法で着陸を成功させたものである．本研究は，より大きな天体や遠方の天体で必要となる，高度に自律的な天体相対の宇宙機の軌道管理の手法を開発したものである．本研究の成果は，より遠くの，より大きな天体への離着陸ミッションの構想実現へ貢献できるものと期待される．