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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 100 - Cocoa Beach - October 2007
Agenda Location	8 SUBCOMMITTEE B – MISSILES AND SPACE 8.3 Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Technology
Title	Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Technology
Presenter	Piero Motto and Ray Barrington
Affiliation	Draper Labs
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	This presentation is a summary of the state of the art, from the author’s point of view, of Approach, Rendezvous, & Docking GN&C technologies, with emphasis on the AR&D autonomy design of the projects flown during the past five years. The spacecraft rendezvous problem was solved four decades ago during the Apollo program and, in the last 15 years, the rendezvous of Space Shuttle and Soyuz with the International Space Station has become a routine. Yet, in spite of similarities between all the AR&D missions, the operational systems and the mission requirements are sufficiently different that the AR&D remains one of the most difficult and safety critical phase of a mission. In the presentation we will describe the Autonomous mission manager implemented on the XSS-11 microsatellite and the Orbital Express servicing satellite. The XSS-11 was launched from a Minotaur I rocket on April 11, 2005. The micro satellite demonstrated approach and rendezvous operations with the expended rocket upper stage. The XSS-11 mission focused on increasing the level of autonomy to successfully plan and safely complete complex missions. Draper Laboratory provided the on-board autonomous mission manager and all the approach and rendezvous guidance and targeting routines. The mission lasted more than a year. Draper, as a member of Boeing’s Orbital Express team for development of the ASTRO servicing satellite and execution of flight operations, supplied and integrated the Mission Manager that has directed the servicing operations. Draper’s Mission Manager is successfully commanding servicing demonstrations for Defense (Advanced Research Projects Agencies (DARPA’s) Orbital Express (OE). Orbital Express was launched on March 9th 2007, and is currently performing mission operations with the successful completion of both pressure fed and pump driven fluid (hydrazine) transfers between two orbiting satellites. The Orbital Express is a DARPA project with the goal of demonstrating autonomous satellite servicing. OE will demonstrate the capability for the servicing satellite, ASTRO, to autonomously rendezvous and capture a surrogate next generation serviceable satellite (NextSat) by both direct soft capture and grapple and berthing using a robotic arm.