Verification and Validation of Autonomous Rendezvous Systems in the Terminal Phase

This paper describes the development and application of worst-case analysis methods to the problem of verifying correct functionality of autonomous GNC systems in the terminal rendezvous phase. Hybrid global/local optimization algorithms are employed to analyze the robustness of a GNC system in the presence of a large number of parametric uncertainties in the spacecraft simulation model with respect to the defined safety criteria for the capture specification. A framework for integrating information from analytical tools from robust control theory into the optimization-based analysis is proposed and applied to the rendezvous problem. The results from the proposed approaches are compared with those obtained via traditional Monte-Carlo simulation, and indicate potentially significant advantages in terms of both improved reliability and efficiency.

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