Timeline based autonomous mission planning system for deep space exploration

In order to realize the explorer autonomy, the software architecture of autonomous mission management system (AMMS) is given for the deep space explorer, and the autonomous mission planning system, the kernel part of this architecture, is designed in detail. In order to describe the parallel activity, the state timeline is introduced to build the formal model of the planning system and based on this model, the temporal constraint satisfaction planning algorithm is proposed to produce the explorer’s activity sequence. With some key subsystems of the deep space explorer as examples, the autonomous mission planning simulation system is designed. The results show that this system can calculate the executable activity sequence with the given mission goals and initial state of the explorer.

UPF based autonomous navigation scheme for deep space probe

The autonomous "celestial navigation scheme" for deep space probe departing from the earth and the autonomous "optical navigation scheme" for encountering object celestial body are presented. Then, aiming at the conditions that large initial estimation errors and non-Gaussian distribution of state or measurement errors may exist in orbit determination process of the two phases, UPF (unscented particle filter) is introduced into the navigation schemes. By tackling nonlinear and non-Gaussian problems, UPF overcomes the accuracy influence brought by the traditional EKF (extended Kalman filter), UKF (unscented Kalman filter), and PF (particle filter) schemes in approximate treatment to nonlinear and non-Gaussian state model and measurement model. The numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility and higher accuracy of the UPF navigation scheme.

Application of the sun line-of-sight vector in the optimal attitude estimation of deep-space probe

This paper proposed an optimal algorithm using the sun line-of-sight vector to improve the probe attitude estimation accuracy in deep-space mission.Firstly,the elaborate analysis of the attitude estimation error from vector observations was done to demonstrate that the geometric relation between the reference vectors is an important factor which influences the accuracy of attitude estimation.Then,with introduction of the sun line-of-sight vector,the attitude quaternion obtained from the star-sensor was converted into a pair of mutually perpendicular reference vectors perpendicular to the sun vector.The normalized weights were calculated according to the accuracy of the sensors.Furthermore,the optimal attitude estimation in the least squares sense was achieved with the quaternion estimation method.Finally,the results of simulation demonstrated the validity of the proposed optimal algorithm based on the practical data of the Deep Impact mission.

Spacecraft formation control strategy on Sun-Earth Lissajous orbit

To carry out the deep space exploration tasks near Sun-Earth Libration point L2, the CRTBP dynamic model was built up and the numerical conditional quasi-periodic orbit (Lissajous orbit) was computed near L2. Then, a formation controller was designed with linear matrix inequality to overcome the difficulty of parameter tuning. To meet the demands of formation accuracy and present thruster’s capability, a threshold scheme was adopted for formation control. Finally, some numerical simulations and analysis were completed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed control strategy.

Impulsive orbit control for spacecraft around asteroid

An impulse feedback control law to change the mean orbit elements of spacecraft around asteroid is presented. First, the mean orbit elements are transferred to the osculating orbit elements at the burning time. Then, the feedback control law based on Gauss’s perturbation equations of motion is given. And the impulse control for targeting from the higher circulation orbit to the specified periapsis is developed. Finally, the numerical simulation is performed and the simulation results show that the presented impulse control law is effective.

Autonomous optical navigation for interplanetary exploration based on information of earth-moon

The image elements of earth-center and moon-center are obtained by processing the images of earthand moon, these image elements in combination with the inertial attitude information and the moon ephemerisare utilized to obtain the probe initial position relative to earth, and the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is usedto determine the accurate probe position relative to earth, and the probe orbit relative to earth is estimated by u-sing the extended Kalman filter. The autonomous optical navigation algorithm is validated using the digital simu-lation.

Motion modeling and formation form analysis of spacecraft near collinear libration points

To meet the increasing research demand for deep space exploration,especially for the second libration point (L2) conditional periodic orbit (Halo orbit) in the Sun-Earth system,the methods to get analytical Halo orbit and differential-correction Halo orbit were described firstly,and the corresponding orbits accuracy was analyzed.Then,based on the results of third-order and differential-correction Halo orbits,the formation form was studied.Analysis was carried out to discuss the influence of system amplitude,initial phase,and phase difference on the formation form,as well as that of initial orbit values on form accuracy.Finally,some simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed methods.

Spacecraft motion analysis about rapid rotating small body

The orbital dynamics equation of a spacecraft around an irregular sphere small body is established based on the small body’s gravitational potential approximated with a tri-axial ellipsoid. According to the Jacobi integral constant, the spacecraft zero-velocity curves in the vicinity of the small body is described and feasible motion region is analyzed. The limited condition and the periapsis radius corresponding to different eccentricity against impact surface are presented. The stability of direct and retrograde equator orbits is analyzed based on the perturbation solutions of mean orbit elements.

Design of MGA trajectories for main belt asteroid

Asteroid exploration is one of the most sophisticated missions currently being investigated. Gravity-assist trajectories have proven valuable in interplanetary missions such as the Pioneer, Voyager and Galileo. In this paper, we design interplanetary trajectory for main belt asteroid exploration mission with the Mars gravity-assist (MGA) using “pork chop” plots and patched-conic theory and give some initial valuable trajectory parameters on main belt asteroid exploration mission with MGA.

A sensor-based motion planner: Situated-Bug

Propose a new sensor-based motion planning approach of Situated-Bug, which is composed of goal-oriented behavior, boundary following behavior and goal-oriented obstacle avoidance behavior, which are based on fuzzy control. The situated-Bug selects its behaviors according to robot orientation, instead of positions and hit points like other Bug algorithms, and its convergence proves robust to sensor noise, and it can guide the robots running for long rang traverse. At the same time, the design of the Situated-Bug is presented. Simulation results show that the approach is effective and practical.

Early Sensor Fault Detection Based on PCA and Clustering Analysis

This paper proposes a novel scoring index for the early sensor fault detection in order to make full use of massive archived spacecraft telemetry data.The early detection of sensor faults is made by using the index constructed by the K-means algorithm and PCA model.The sensor fault detection includes the learning phase and monitoring phase.The amplitude of sensor fault has been always increasing when the performance of sensors deteriorates during a period.The proposed index can detect the smaller sensor faults than the squared prediction error( SPE) index which means it can discover the sensor faults earlier than the later.The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed index which can decrease the check-limit as much as 40% than SPE in the same magnitude of bias sensor fault.

Ivar asteroid rendezvous mission system scenario and trajectory design

The asteroid exploration opportunities are searched and calculated with launch dates in 2006 to2010, and with asteroid Ivar 1627 as the target, the spacecraft and its subsystems are designed and analyzed,and the transfer trajectory is designed using △VEGA technology for the asteroid rendezvous. The design resultssatisfied the energy requirements for small explorers.

Autonomous determination of orbit for probe around asteroids using unscented Kalman filter

The observed images of the asteroid and the asteroid reference images are used to obtain the probe-to-asteroid direction and the location of the limb features of the asteroid in the inertial coordinate. These informa-tion in combination with the shape model of the asteroid and attitude information of the probe are utilized to ob-tain the position of the probe. The position information is then input to the UKF which determines the real-timeorbit of the probe. Finally, the autonomous orbit determination algorithm is validated using digital simulation.The determination of orbit using UKF is compared with that using extended Kalman filter (EKF), and the resultshows that UKF is superior to EKF.

Optimization of multi-revolution low-thrust transfer based on modified direct method

A modified direct optimization method is proposed to solve the optimal multi-revolution transfer with low-thrust between Earth-orbits.First,through parameterizing the control steering angles by costate variables,the search space of free parameters has been decreased.Then,in order to obtain the global optimal solution effectively and robustly,the simulated annealing and penalty function strategies were used to handle the constraints,and a GA/SQP hybrid optimization algorithm was utilized to solve the parameter optimization problem,in which,a feasible suboptimal solution obtained by GA was submitted as an initial parameter set to SQP for refinement.Comparing to the classical direct method,this novel method has fewer free parameters,needs not initial guesses,and has higher computation precision.An optimal-fuel transfer problem from LEO to GEO was taken as an example to validate the proposed approach.The results of simulation indicate that our approach is available to solve the problem of optimal multi-revolution transfer between Earth-orbits.

Effect of pin rotating speed on lap shear strength of stationary shoulder friction stir lap welded 6005A-T6 aluminum alloy

Stationary shoulder friction stir lap welding （SSFSLW） was successfully used to weld 6005A-T6 aluminum alloy in this paper. Effect of pin rotating speed on cross section morphologies and lap shear strength of the SSFSLW joints were mainly discussed. Results show that joints without flash and shoulder marks can be obtained by the stationary shoulder. Cross section of the SSFSLW joint presents a basin-like morphology and little material loss. By increasing the rotating speed from 1 000 rpm to 1 600 rpm, both effective sheet thickness and lap width increase, while lap shear failure load firstly decreases and then increases. The maximum failure load of 14. 05 kN /s attained when 1 000 rpm is used. All SSFSLW joints present shear fracture mode.

Fault diagnosis in neutral point indirectly grounded system basedon information fusion

In neutral point indirectly grounded systems, phase-to-ground fault is putting new demands on fault diagnosis technology. Information fusion is applied to detect the phase-to-ground fault, which integrates several sources of information, including line current, line voltage, zero sequence current and voltage, and quintic harmonic wave component. This method is testified through the simulation of Matlab. Simulation results show that the precision and reliability of the detection has been greatly increased.

Autonomous planning system based on temporal constraint satisfaction

In order to realize spacecraft autonomy activity duration and complex temporal relations must betaken into consideration. In the space mission planning system, the traditional planners are unable to describethis knowledge, so an object-oriented temporal knowledge representation method is proposed to model every ac-tivity as an object to describe the activity' s duration, start-time, end-time and the temporal relations with otheractivities. The layered planming agent architecture is then designed for spacecraft autonomous operation, and thefunctions of every component are given. A planning algorithm based on the temporal constraint satisfaction isbuilt in detail using this knowledge representation and system architecture. The prototype of Deep Space MissionAutonomous Planning System is implemented. The results show that with the object-oriented temporal knowledgedescription method, the space mission planning system can be used to describe simultaneous activities, resourceand temporal constraints, and produce a complete plan for exploration mission quickly under complex con-straints.

Rescheduling of observing spacecraft using fuzzy neural network and ant colony algorithm

This paper aims at rescheduling of observing spacecraft imaging plans under uncertainties. Firstly, uncertainties in spacecraft observation scheduling are analyzed. Then, considering the uncertainties with fuzzy features, this paper proposes a fuzzy neural network and a hybrid rescheduling policy to deal with them. It then establishes a mathematical model and manages to solve the rescheduling problem by proposing an ant colony algorithm, which introduces an adaptive control mechanism and takes advantage of the information in an existing schedule. Finally, the above method is applied to solve the rescheduling problem of a certain type of earth-observing satellite. The computation of the example shows that the approach is feasible and effective in dealing with uncertainties in spacecraft observation scheduling. The approach designed here can be useful in solving the problem that the original schedule is contaminated by disturbances.

Satellite range scheduling with the priority constraint: An improved genetic algorithm using a station ID encoding method

Abstract Satellite range scheduling with the priority constraint is one of the most important prob lems in the field of satellite operation. This paper proposes a station coding based genetic algorithm to solve this problem, which adopts a new chromosome encoding method that arranges tasks according to the ground station ID. The new encoding method contributes to reducing the complex ity in conflict checking and resolving, and helps to improve the ability to find optimal resolutions. Three different selection operators are designed to match the new encoding strategy, namely ran dom selection, greedy selection, and roulette selection. To demonstrate the benefits of the improved genetic algorithm, a basic genetic algorithm is designed in which two cross operators are presented, a singlepoint crossover and a multipoint crossover. For the purpose of algorithm test and analysis, a problemgenerating program is designed, which can simulate problems by modeling features encountered in realworld problems. Based on the problem generator, computational results and analysis are made and illustrated for the scheduling of multiple ground stations.

Simultaneous state and actuator fault estimation for satellite attitude control systems

In this paper, a new nonlinear augmented observer is proposed and applied to satellite attitude control systems. The observer can estimate system state and actuator fault simultaneously. It can enhance the performances of rapidly-varying faults estimation. Only original system matrices are adopted in the parameter design. The considered faults can be unbounded, and the proposed augmented observer can estimate a large class of faults. Systems without disturbances and the fault whose finite times derivatives are zero piecewise are initially considered, followed by a discussion of a general situation where the system is subject to disturbances and the finite times derivatives of the faults are not null but bounded. For the considered nonlinear system, convergence conditions of the observer are provided and the stability analysis is performed using Lyapunov direct method. Then a feasible algorithm is explored to compute the observer parameters using linear matrix inequalities （LMIs）. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by considering an example of a closed-loop satellite attitude control system. The mance in estimating states and actuator faults. It also successfully. simulation results show satisfactory perfor- shows that multiple faults can be estimated