ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The first Automated Transfer Vehicle “Jules Verne” successfully docked to the ISS on April 3rd, after a series of in-orbit demonstrations of its phasing, hazard avoidance and rendezvous capabilities. It is not only the largest European spacecraft ever build, but also the first European vehicle able to perform automated rendezvous and docking, and the largest ever to do so in the complex context of human spaceflight. A high system performance, and compliance to severe safety constraints, had to be assured for this achievement. ATV flight is autonomously controlled by GNC algorithms of the flight control system (FLC), based on measurements supplied by the sensors of the GNC measurement system (GMS). An independent Flight Control Monitoring (FCM) function use different navigation sensors to monitor in real time the nominal flight. A sophisticated Mission and Vehicle Management function (MVM) controls the ATV finite state machine based on mission plans uploaded from the ATV Control Centre (CNES Toulouse), with automated real-time reconfigurations in the event of self-detected contingencies (e.g. sensor malfunction). All these functions are implemented in the main onboard Flight Application Software (FAS), running on a pool of 3 data processing units. The Rendezvous Monitoring and Collision Avoidance (RMCA) function is implemented onboard to ensure ISS safety during the rendezvous and the departure phases through a segregated but fault tolerant safety chain with dedicated computers and sensors.