The satellite formation flying in lab: PROBA-3/ASPIICS metrology

[en] Formation flying is one of the most promising techniques for the future of astronomy and astrophysics from the space. The capabilities of the rockets strongly affect the dimensions and the weights of telescopes and instrumentation to be launched. Telescopes composed by several smallest satellites in formation flying, could be the key for build big space telescopes. With this aim, the ESA PROBA-3 mission will demonstrate the capabilities of this technology, maintaining two satellites aligned within 1 mm (longitudinal) when the nominal distance between the two is of around 144m. The scientific objective of the mission is the observation of the solar corona down to 1.08 solar radii. The Coronagraph Spacecraft (CSC) will observe the Sun, when the second spacecraft, the Occulter Spacecraft (OSC) will work as an external occulter, eclipsing to the CSC the sun disk. The finest metrology sub-systems, the Shadow Position Sensors (SPS) and the Occulter Position Sensor Emitters (OPSE) identifying respectively the CSC-Sun axis and the formation flying (i.e., CSC-OSC) axis will be considered here. In particular, this paper is dedicated to the test-bed for the characterization, the performance analysis and the algorithms capabilities analysis of the both the metrology subsystems. The test-bed is able to simulate the different flight conditions of the two spacecraft and will give the opportunity to check the response of the subsystems in the conditions as close as possible to the flight ones.

Disciplines :

Space science, astronomy & astrophysics

Author, co-author :

Capobianco, G; INAF > Astrophysical Observatory of Turin

Thizy, Cédric ; Université de Liège > CSL (Centre Spatial de Liège)

Renotte, Etienne ; Université de Liège > CSL (Centre Spatial de Liège)

Language :

English

Title :

The satellite formation flying in lab: PROBA-3/ASPIICS metrology

Publication date :

June 2016

Event name :

SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016

Event organizer :

SPIE

Event place :

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Event date :

26/06/2016 - 01/07/2016

Audience :

International

Journal title :

Proceedings of SPIE: The International Society for Optical Engineering

ISSN :

0277-786X

eISSN :

1996-756X

Publisher :

International Society for Optical Engineering, Bellingham, United States - Washington

Available on ORBi :

since 26 January 2017

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Bibliography

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Baccani, C. et al., "Preliminary evaluation of the diffraction behind the PROBA-3/ASPIICS optimized occulter," Proc. SPIE, this conference (2016).
Landini, F. et al., "Significance of the occulter diffraction for PROBA-3/ASPIICS formation flight metrology," Proc. SPIE 9604, 96040E (2015).
Focardi, M. et al., "Formation Flying Metrology for the ESA-PROBA3 Mission: The Shadow Position Sensors (SPS) silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) readout electronics," Proc. SPIE 9604, 96040D-1 (2015).
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