Kyle M. Fox Daniel C. Juchtman Catherine C. Yopp Zachary R. Nadeau Adam K. Duke Joseph A. McNaughton IV Michael J. Tomaso Elisa Castillo
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
The purpose of this project is to give undergraduate students an opportunity to design, manufacture, and maintain a mock spacecraft to be used as a testbed for autonomous control systems. The spacecra..
The purpose of this project is to give undergraduate students an opportunity to design, manufacture, and maintain a mock spacecraft to be used as a testbed for autonomous control systems. The spacecraft is based on two previous models: the JX-01, an undergraduate built testbed, and the Asteroid Free Flyer led by NASA engineer and ERAU doctoral student, Michael Dupuis. This model includes cable improvements, Inertial Measurement Units (IMU), Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), and object-based state estimation to improve control stabilization. When completed, the hardware built for this project will provide undergraduates and researchers a platform with which they can test control algorithms and spacecraft component design. The results gathered from the project thus far is the building and design and controls experience between the team. After completion we will be able to obtain a properly modeled control algorithm and test it against multiple conditions. The final goal of the spacecraft is to provide the capabilities and perform experiments to test multiple methods to mitigate the effects of internal and external forces such as fuel sloshing, solar radiation, debris collision, and CG change.