Someday, instead of large, expensive individual space satellites, teams of smaller satellites - known by scientists as a "swarm" - will work in collaboration, enabling greater accuracy, agility, and autonomy. Among the scientists working to make these teams a reality are researchers at Stanford University's Space Rendezvous Lab, who recently completed the first-ever in-orbit test of a prototype system able to navigate a swarm of satellites using only visual information shared through a wireless network.
"It's a milestone paper and the culmination of 11 years of effort by my lab, which was founded with this goal of surpassing the current state of the art and practice in distributed autonomy in space," said Simone D'Amico, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and senior author of the study. "Starling is the first demonstration ever made of an autonomous swarm of satellites."
The test is known as Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment, or StarFOX. In it, the team successfully navigated four small satellites working in tandem using only visual information gathered from onboard cameras to calculate their trajectories (or orbits). The researchers presented their findings from the initial StarFOX test at a gathering of swarm satellite experts at the Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah.
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NASA is sending a team of four CubeSats into orbit around Earth to see if they're able to cooperate on their own, without real-time updates from mission control. While that kind of autonomous cooperation may not sound too difficult for humans, this team will be robotic - composed of small satellites to test out key technologies for the future of deep space missions. | NASA Ames Research Center
