ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The involvement of multiple spacecraft is becoming a frequent outline of current and planned future space missions. This paper considers the problem of testing the vision-based relative navigation of multiple spacecraft, performed on-board another spacecraft with a centralized noncooperative approach. The navigation system relies on a monocamera in the context of a challenging reduced-visibility of the targets. The considered navigation system includes an Image Processing algorithm to take Line of Sight measurements of CubeSats in proximity of a binary asteroids system. The optical measurements are processed by a Filter along with inter satellite ranging measurements, in order to estimate the CubeSats position relative to the asteroid system. The paper tackles the problem of validating the navigation algorithm. A thorough numerical testing campaign is conducted to assess the navigation approach robustness. The algorithm testing approach is presented in detail, including the Image Processing and Filter?s tests and open-loop tests, showing successful results.