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Active TRL 4 (started at 3, targeting 6)
Most spacecraft today rely on ground-based estimates of their position/velocity from the Deep Space Network (DSN) to be uplinked periodically to maintain accurate state knowledge and navigate reliably. Any sustained loss of communications with the vehicle therefore poses a high risk for loss of mission/vehicle/crew. Additionally, DSN access is costly and generally over-subscribed. Thus, there is a need throughout the spaceflight community for an autonomous, onboard navigation system that can operate independent of ground communication to reduce mission risk and DSN reliance.
An Optical Navigation (opnav) system can be used to address this need. An opnav system involves one or more cameras on the vehicle that capture and process imagery of various targets that are visible during flight to generate state measurements onboard. The Orion spacecraft, for example, uses a single-camera opnav system to process Earth/Moon horizon limbs.
The Target & Range-adaptive Optical Navigation (TRON) system is a dual-camera opnav tool that supports a variety of techniques to extract navigation information from images of multiple targets depending on range, including:
TRON can therefore be used over a wide range of mission profiles alongside other sensors with measurements directed to an onboard navigation filter for robust state estimation.
TRON was built by a team at NASA Johnson Space Center and Goddard Space Flight Center and will be available in Q1 FY27 as a cFS-based application that can be deployed on a variety of spacecraft using either custom TRON hardware or compatible user-selected cameras/processors. This system will undergo flight test demonstrations on the upcoming R5-S6 cubesat in LEO (Q2 FY27) and the upcoming CAPSTONE02 spacecraft in NRHO (Q2 FY28).
The TRON application will offer a suite of OpNav capabilities that be infused on a variety of manned/unmanned spacecraft to enable autonomous, onboard navigation across a wide range of mission profiles to reduce crew/vehicle/mission risk across the spaceflight community.
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