Masatoshi Harigae

The concept of autonomous flight management system for future spacecraft

Abstract The concept of autonomy is regarded as an important issue for the future spacecraft management system. For a possible one approach to design an “autonomous” system, ideas from artificial intelligence (AI) are applied in a sense that the parametric relationship among relevant system parameters can be learned during the operation or the intended learning process. The results are stored successively in the knowledge data base, sets of information of which again are used during the operation in the learning process. A scope of the autonomous flight management system based on the proposed learning system as well as simulated results are discussed.

System Design of the Pseudolite DGPS System for ALFLEX.

For a reusable space plane, the GPS navigation is essential to perform an accurate onboard navigation. Moreover, if the GPS navigation with the differential GPS technique performs high navigation accuracy and can be applied to the landing phase, the onboard GN&C system of a space plane is simplified and its weight is reduced. The National Space Development Ageacy of Japan (NASDA) and the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) have been studying the GPS navigation for an automatic landing. As one of the research items of the Automatic Landing Flight Experiment (ALFLEX), we designed and manufactured the pseudolite DGPS system for ALFLEX and evaluated its function and performance using real flight data. This paper presents mainly the system design results of the Pseudolite DGPS System for ALFLEX. And as the evaluation of these designs, the results of the ground experiment and the flight experiment by airplane are described.