Robust relative navigation scheme for the autonomous flight in close proximity of an uncooperative space target

Being able to perform autonomous relative navigation with respect to an uncooperative and possibly unknown space target is a critical task in the framework of on-orbit servicing and active debris removal applications. Electro-Optical sensors are required because of the non-cooperative nature of the target. Specifically, the solution proposed in this work is a LIDAR-based relative navigation architecture, which combines, in a loosely-coupled configuration, a pose determination algorithm, designed to process raw LIDAR data (i.e. point clouds), with an unscented Kalman filter to estimate relative motion parameters as well as inertia properties of the target. The developed algorithm is tested in a numerical simulation environment realistically reproducing the operation of a scanning LIDAR and the relative motion between two spacecraft.