ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

PRISMA mission is a “technology in-orbit testbed mission” for demonstrating formation flying and rendezvous technologies, funded by the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) with Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) as prime contractor. This multilateral project involves additional contributions from CNES, the German DLR and the Danish DTU. It is composed of two satellites, MANGO and TANGO, that fly on a 700 km sun synchronous orbit to perform various rendezvous and Formation Flying (FF) experiments. CNES contribution to the PRISMA mission, called FFIORD (Formation Flying In Orbit Ranging Demonstration), is based on a radiofrequency based relative sensor system (FFRF) and a flight software implementing various algorithms of Navigation, Guidance and Control performing rendezvous, proximity operations as well as obstacle avoidance maneuvers. After a brief summary of PRISMA and FFIORD experiment, the paper details the relative rendezvous guidance function: from the design of the algorithms to the in-flight closed loop results.