Autonomous Antenna Pointing under the Impact of Unpredictable Platform Movement

Due to the interactive manner of real-time Teleoperation in low earth orbits, autonomic pointing becomes a challenging issue as the rapidly changing platform motion is not predictable for the whole operation period. Hence antenna trajectories cannot be calculated beforehand. To meet the high requirements of future missions like on-orbit servicing and interactive earth observation, technologies for real-time communication between low earth orbit spacecrafts and geostationary data relay satellites are being developed at the Institute of Astronautics. One of these technologies is a compact intersatellite antenna system with high precision, two axis pointing mechanism enabling long access periods via Geostationary Data Relay Satellite (DRS). A detailed dynamic simulation of the coupled dynamics between platform and antenna system was used to analyze and optimize control methods. This paper presents the simulation environment and discusses control methods and simulation results for highly autonomous antenna pointing under the impact of unpredictable platform motion and rapidly changing spacecraft geometries.     «

Due to the interactive manner of real-time Teleoperation in low earth orbits, autonomic pointing becomes a challenging issue as the rapidly changing platform motion is not predictable for the whole operation period. Hence antenna trajectories cannot be calculated beforehand. To meet the high requirements of future missions like on-orbit servicing and interactive earth observation, technologies for real-time communication between low earth orbit spacecrafts and geostationary data relay satellites...     »