VANGUARD: Vision-based Autonomous Navigation and Guidance for Unparalleled Access, Resilience, and Deployment

Rhea Space Activity, Inc. proposes VANGUARD:Vision-based Autonomous Navigation and Guidance for Unassisted Approach, Rendezvous, and Deployment as an optical navigation payload enabling fully autonomous maneuvering. The VANGUARD project addresses multiple facets of the Space Sustainment and Maneuver endeavor by prototyping, testing, and evaluating performance of a payload that enables next-generation maneuver strategies and integrates with existing systems. VANGUARD provides onboard maneuver planning for sudden or unexpected missions with short planning windows, such as a cislunar rendezvous or proximity operations (RPO) mission with a newly discovered resident space object (RSO). It also enables an uninterruptible, closed-loop guidance capability for an approach in the presence of GPS jamming or an uncooperative target. The VANGUARD Direct-to-Phase II (D2P2) campaign will focus on software development to enhance existing systems, prototyping and testing of new guidance functionality, and development of an optical test bed for hardware-in-the-loop simulation and analysis.VANGUARD builds upon RSA’s Jervis Autonomy Module (JAM), an optical navigation module for domains where GNSS isn’t available. JAM consists of a camera and a digital processing unit (DPU) running TRL-6 Virtual Machine Language (VML) 3.0 and TRL-6 AutoNav Mark 4 software. JAM provides real-time guidance to the spacecraft by passing burn information for the attitude control system and thrust allocator to execute. All guidance and navigation functions are performed completely autonomously: the spacecraft’s mission is sequenced in VML via state machine logic, baselined onboard before launch and updated in flight via ground uplink when necessary. VANGUARD presents the following advantages:Radio-Silent, GPS-Denied Optical Navigation: VANGUARD provides navigation solutions solely using visual band, panchromatic images of targets with known ephemerides. This allows the host spacecraft to navigate throughout cislunar and deep space without GPS or ground-based radiometrics. The passive sensing approach also maintains “radio silence” when maneuvering, enhancing stealth capability and allowing the spacecraft to transit between orbits unannounced.Autonomous and Reactive Maneuver Planning: VANGUARD’s AutoNav software (originally developed for NASA’s Deep Space 1 and Deep Impact missions) derives impulsive or finite burn maneuvers for target-relative, Cartesian position- and velocity-based targeting as well as hyperbolic or undeflected B-plane targeting. This enables autonomous station keeping, orbit transfer, and RPO, and allows the operator to “fire and forget” by commanding high-level targeting objectives without having to plan or replan the maneuvers.Low SWaP, Bolt-On Solution: VANGUARD is simple to integrate with existing spacecraft via SpaceWire or other interfaces, and a typical wide field of view (WFOV) unit weighs about 2 kg and has a volumetric footprint less than a cubic foot.