Cooperative Relative Navigation of Spacecraft Using Flash Light Detection and Ranging Sensors

Autonomous rendezvous and docking of a spacecraft with a cooperative target vehicle is critical for a wide array of future mission applications, and flash light detection and ranging sensors are one of the most promising sensors for achieving this task. This paper presents an end-to-end assessment of how these sensors may be used for relative navigation. Within a unified framework, detailed discussions are provided on the topics of navigation architecture, flash light detection and ranging sensors measurements and image processing, reflector identification, and the estimation of relative position and attitude.