On-Orbital Experiment on Target Motion Estimation and Tracking Using Micro-LABSAT

On a NASDA’s microsatellite named “µ-LABSAT,” which was launched by H-IIA on December 14, 2002, Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) and University of Tokyo (UT) are jointly performing several orbital experiments as technology demonstration towards the future orbital servicing missions. UT plans to release a small object named “target,” and its rotational motion is estimated by the images captured continually using a camera developed by CRL. Then satellite attitude control will be performed by visual feedbacks of the target image position on the camera frame so that the target image may come to a certain point on the camera frame. This is a pre-experiment of so-called LOS (Line Of Sight) control during rendezvous and docking to the satellite to be serviced. In this paper, the objectives and procedure of these experiments will be described.