LIDAR-BASED RELATIVE NAVIGATION IN CLOSE-PROXIMITY OF UNCOOPERATIVE SPACE TARGET

Autonomous relative navigation for safe approach manoeuvres with respect to an uncooperative space target is a critical task for many space applications such as on-orbit servicing (OOS) or active debris removal (ADR). Due to the uncooperative nature of the target, Electro-Optical sensors mounted on board the chaser must be exploited to enable relative navigation: the focus here is placed on active systems, e.g., LIDARs. In this paper, an original loosely-coupled relative navigation architecture which integrates pose determination algorithms designed to process raw LIDAR data (i.e. 3D point clouds) with a multiplicative extended Kalman filter is presented. Performance assessment is carried out within a numerical simulation environment reproducing the operation of a scanning LIDAR and the relative motion between two spacecraft.