ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The PRoject for On-Board Autonomy (PROBA) is an ESA technology-demonstration program aimed at the in-orbit validation of autonomy-enabling space technologies. Following the success of PROBA-1, the PROBA-2 spacecraft was launched on 2 November 2009 and continues the in-flight demonstration of on-board autonomy by performing a Sun observation mission while, at the same time, allowing the exploitation of several software and hardware experiments. This paper completes previously published papers by presenting in-flight verification results of the six flight software experiments embarked as additional modules of the PROBA-2 Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) software. To support the presentation of these flight test results, this paper first makes an overview of the PROBA-2 mission and its AOCS software. Then, each flight software experiment is introduced along with a presentation of the current in-flight validation status and test results. Finally, the paper demonstrates how one of these flight software experiments improves the performance of the nominal Sun observation mode.