Image credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin
Adapted Computer Program Pushes Satellite Navigation Toward Autonomy
This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on January 19, 2019 was created by combining two images taken on board NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The Optical Navigation team on OSIRIS-REx used images of Bennu, like this one, to help navigate the spacecraft with unprecedented accuracy, proving the technology.
As Goddard engineers continue to push the boundaries of navigation technology, one team is working to make navigation easier for smaller satellites with less processing power and bandwidth. Optical navigation technology, adapted from NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRISREx) mission, would place navigation capabilities onboard satellites rather than on the ground like other, similar technologies. The new technology serves three purposes, said aerospace engineer and team lead Andrew Liounis: building a 3-D global model of the object the satellite is approaching — called a global shape model, modeling small patches of the same object in higher resolution, and estimating the relative brightness of spots on the surface. www.nasa.gov/gsfctechnology
With this new technology, satellites would not only be able to navigate better, but scientists and engineers would also get a better sense of the target objects, such as their geographical features and gravity fields. The team previously worked on navigation for OSIRIS-REx, helping create the high-resolution model of the asteroid Bennu. That mission had ample access to the Deep Space Network, which helps communicate data back to Earth, along with more ground workers to process the images once they arrived. Images were communicated back to Earth and compiled into a model in a long, handson process, using resources that might not be available for smaller missions. Continued on page 16
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cuttingedge • goddard’s emerging technologies
Volume 17 • Issue 4 • Summer 2021
