PRISMA—A formation flying project in implementation phase

The PRISMA project for autonomous formation flying and rendezvous has passed its critical design review in February–March 2007. The project comprises two satellites which are an in-orbit testbed for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) algorithms and sensors for advanced formation flying and rendezvous. Several experiments involving GNC algorithms, sensors and thrusters will be performed during a 10 month mission with launch planned for the second half of 2009.The project is run by the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) in close cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the French Space Agency (CNES) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Additionally, the project also will demonstrate flight worthiness of two novel motor technologies: one that uses environmentally clean and non-hazardous propellant, and one that consists of a microthruster system based on MEMS technology.The project will demonstrate autonomous formation flying and rendezvous based on several sensors—GPS, RF-based and vision based—with different objectives and in different combinations. The GPS-based onboard navigation system, contributed by DLR, offers relative orbit information in real-time in decimetre range. The RF-based navigation instrument intended for DARWIN, under CNES development, will be tested for the first time on PRISMA, both for instrument performance, but also in closed loop as main sensor for formation flying. Several rendezvous and proximity manoeuvre experiments will be demonstrated using only vision based sensor information coming from the modified star camera provided by DTU. Semi-autonomous operations ranging from 200 km to 1 m separation between the satellites will be demonstrated.With the project now in the verification phase particular attention is given to the specific formation flying and rendezvous functionality on instrument, GNC-software and system level.