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GNC, AOCS & Pointing Laboratory

GNC, AOCS & Pointing Laboratory

The Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC), Attitude Orbit Control (AOCs) & Pointing Laboratory supports engineering research, evaluation and investigations for ESA Projects and R&D Programs through prototyping, characterisation and testing of the products related to AOCS and pointing systems

The activities performed in these laboratories are a source of hands-on experience for the maintenance of engineering competence and ongoing training of ESA technical officers, of staff supporting ESA projects and of trainees.

Contact

For testing, use of equipment and other enquiries for this TEC location, please refer to the assigned contacts:

Irene Huertas

Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) Test Facilities

Jeroen Vandersteen

AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control Systems) & GNC (Guidance Navigation Control) sensor test facilities

Fabrice Boquet

AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control Systems) & Pointing Systems test facilities

Davide Oddenino

AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control Systems) & Pointing Systems test facilities

The laboratories main objectives are to:

Support the technology and program developments by providing specific complementary measurements, evaluating performances / prototypes; preparing and validating methodologies and standards
Conduct investigation in case of failure or anomaly occurrence, at component, board, equipment level, to help in determining the root cause of the anomaly, and make independent evaluation and assessment
Support innovation, and the initiation of new space mission developments
Support pre-flight verification campaigns
Support the post flight analysis tasks with the aim to derive flight performance and increase the knowledge of design and development by lessons learnt

Arm out to asteroid

Darkened GRALS chamber

Simulated satellite rendezvous

PEMSUN marker for satellites

AOCS and Pointing Systems Test Facilities

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The GNC and AOCS Sensors Test Facility

The facility supports activities for the development of AOCS sensors and actuators: star trackers, Active Pixel Sensors (APS), sun sensors, gyros, accelerometers, magnetometers, magnetic torquers, etc.

The facility provides the opportunities for early prototyping, characterization, and testing in relevant environment (dynamic, thermal) of new AOCS sensors. This supports the de-risking of industry developments. Additionally, the lab allows the benchmarking of European developments with non-European equipment on a common test bench. Finally, hardware anomaly investigations and the preparation of flight demonstrators are also supported.

Hardware development activities under ESA’s technology programmes (such as GSTP) have supported by the GNC and AOCS sensors test facility, such as: the Faintstar image sensor, Lens R&D’s Bison64 Sun sensor, Lusospace’s demisable magnetorquer, the Sireus series of gyroscopes, Innalab’s AQUILA accelerometer, Terma and Sodern’s star tracker developments, among others.

The GNC and AOCS Sensors Test Facility

Instruments & technical parameters

Thermal Shock chamber

ESPEC, model TSE-11-A
Temperature range up to -65 to +150˚C
Ambient pressure, lab air

Vacuum oven

Pressure of 10 mbar to 1100 mbar
Temperature range between +20 to +200 ˚C

Sun sensor performance characterization setup

Sun simulator based on a Xenon arc discharge lamp
Sun intensity up to 10% of solar constant achievable
2 axis rotary table for angular positioning of the Sun sensor, with resolution of 3 arcsec, and repeatability of 7 arcsec (with gearbox backlash correction)

The GNC and AOCS Sensors Test Facility

Instruments & technical parameters

Single-star simulator

Single star simulator based on a Xenon arc discharge lamp and reflective collimator
Spectral classes B, A, F, G, M, K can be simulated
Visual magnitude range of 2.0 to 7.0 can be simulated
2 axis rotary table for angular positioning of the Sun sensor, with resolution of 3 arcsec, and repeatability of 7 arcsec (with gearbox backlash correction)

Single-axis rotary table with thermal chamber

Acutronic AC1120Si equipment
Temperature range of -55 to +150˚C
Accuracy better than 15 arcsec (peak)
Rate range up to 2000 ˚/sec
Rate stability of 0.001%
Rate resolution of ±0.001˚/sec
Expected to be available mid 2022

AOCS and Pointing Systems Test Facilities

The AOCS and Pointing Systems test facility, managed by the AOCS and Pointing Systems section (TEC-SAA) supports R&D activities related to AOCS prototyping, implementation of innovative techniques for AOCS design and tuning, high accuracy pointing and dynamic systems. The laboratory developed and tested a system mitigating the micro-vibrations generated by a wheel or by a cryo-cooler. This closed loop system uses force cells or IMU as sensors, a MICROLABBOX or a Raspberry PI as CPU, and 6x Proof Mass Actuators.

Besides, a fast and high definition camera and associated software performs motion amplification visualising and measuring micro-vibrations of complete structures in a non-intrusive way up to 3000Hz.

Instruments & technical parameters

Angular Rate sensor from ATA

ARS-14 (x2)

Piezo tip-tilt mirror and associated electronics from PI

S330, S335

IO hardware interface and software from dSpace

MICROLABBOX

Accelerometers and conditioners from PCB

352C33 (x2), 356B18 (x2)

ICP accelerometers from WILCOXON

731-207

Accelerometers conditioners from PCB

482C05

Laser Autocollimator from LDS

CONEX LDS

Fast Steering Mirror from CEDRAT

4-channel charge amplifier from BRUEL & KJAER

NEXUS 2692 (x3)

Optical table from NEWPORT

M-INT1-49-8-A

Fast and High definition camera IRIS MX from RDI Technology

GNC Test Facility

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GRALS

The goal of the GNC Rendezvous, Approach and Landing Simulator (GRALS) is to demonstrate the performance of visual navigation algorithms with hardware-in-the-loop capabilities in a dynamical environment, and to implement and test relative navigation algorithms, in particular for Rendezvous and Landing scenarios.

GRALS is able to reproduce:

Scaled landing trajectories for planetary or small body-missions descent phase

Scaled and 1:1 trajectories for planetary or small body-missions landing/touchdown phase

Scaled trajectories for rendezvous missions

Scaled and 1:1 trajectories for the final approach and docking/berthing of the rendezvous phase of a mission

GRALS

Instruments & technical parameters

The facility consists of:

One 1100mm robot arm suspended from a 5.6m rail on the ceiling

One 1100mm robot arm suspended to a 33m rail on the wall

Darkening elements

Operator Support Equipment ad network

Optical Navigation Test bed (VISILAB)

The objective of VISILAB is to support future exploration projects and prototyping innovative vision-based techniques. VISILAB contains a small size, high-resolution vision-based test bed for planetary landing and several hardware elements and cameras. This test bed has been used successfully to demonstrate the performance of visual navigation algorithms with hardware-in-the-loop capabilities, to implement and test relative navigation algorithms. This test bed has also been used to support the review of the domains of camera calibration and visual navigation. The VISILAB also has a UR5 collaborative robot to place a sensor (e.g. camera) on its end and perform open-loop or close-loop GNC simulations.

Instruments & technical parameters

Optical table
Various visual-spectrum and infrared cameras

New Generation Launcher and Space Transportation Advanced Avionics Test Bed (NGT-ATB)

The New Generation Launcher and Space Transportation Advanced Avionics Test Bed’s (NGT-ATB Test Bed) main purpose is to support the demonstration and validation at system level of upcoming space avionics related standards and technologies in a representative environment, as well as supporting projects from a verification of the design point of view in their need of assessing particular technology related issues.

It is a reference implementation of space avionics test bench for simulation and verification purposes throughout the project life cycle:

Functional Engineering Simulator
Software Validation Facility (with OBC emulator or Processor-in-the-Loop)
Assembly Integration and Verification setup (e.g. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations)

The FES includes three different scenarios:

3-stage launcher scenario

Non-cooperative rendezvous in LEO

Moon launch and rendezvous in near-rectilinear orbit

Instruments & technical parameters

For the launcher scenario, the HIL configuration includes:

dSpace DS1007 board for real-word real-time simulation

GR-RASTA-101 with LEON2 board for on-board computer simulation

DSP-1760 Fiber Optic Gyro physically stimulated

Gimbal system SFH-50

Off-the-shelf electro mechanical actuators to simulate the thrust vector

Actuation on a nozzle mock-up with representative MCI

Services

TESTING

Vibration Test
Shock Test
Performance Evaluation
Test Beds Development
Characterisation
Vision-Based Techniques Testing

Test Methods Development
Life Testing
Environmental testing (For Instance, Thermal Cycling Tests, Thermal Vacuum Test, etc)
Anomaly Investigations

Characterisation
Closed Loop Testing
Vision-Based Techniques Testing

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION REGARDING THE ACCESS TO THE LABORATORY

Benedicte Girouart

Head of GNC, AOCS and Pointing Division