Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
NASA’s New Millennium Program consists of a se-ries of missions whose primary purpose is to demon-strate the feasibility of new technologies for space-flight. Deep Space 1 is the first in this series of mis-sions. It was launched on October 24, 1999 and has completed its first leg of the mission- flyby of the asteroid Braille- on July 29, 1999. An additional en-counter is planned with the short period comet Bor-relly in September 2001. The new technologies being demonstrated on DS1 include, among others, an ion propulsion system to provide maneuvering thrust, a combined visible/infrared/ultraviolet imaging in-strument, and an autonomous navigation system. The purpose of this paper is to describe the com-putational elements of the autonomous navigation system and assess its performance in guiding the spacecraft to its first target. Some of the difficul-ties encountered during this leg, and how they were overcome, will also be described.
Bhaskaran et al. (Mon,) studied this question.