Fiscal Year	2013
Division	Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department	Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Investigator(s)	Romano, Marcello
Sponsor	National Reconnaissance Office (DoD)
Summary	We will investigate the Dynamics, Guidance and Control of a spacecraft equipped with one or multiple robotic manipulators for the physical interaction with a Resident Space Object. An innovative space asset of this kind may enable several critical missions including, for instance, servicing, debris removal and defensive counter-measures in a mother-daughter spacecraft scenario, and on-orbit assembly of larger system starting from modular units. Two main possible approaches for the Guidance and Control of such a system will be studied: I) an autonomous control approach based on optimal control and non-linear control theories, 2) a hybrid autonomous/tele-operation approach, which may be preferable, in particular, for low-earth-orbit operations. Furthermore, docking/capture technologies will be studied, including Electro-adhesion for uncollaborative objects, and shape memory alloys interfaces for collaborative objects. The proposed research, which is the continuation of a previously funded initial effort, will involve an original combination of analytical-numerical research together with experimental testing on a floating spacecraft simulator test bed at NPS. The proposed research contributes to the education of the NPS student officers (of both the Space Systems Engineering and Space Systems Operations Curricula): six students are currently in Dr. Romano's team, while twenty-seven students graduated with thesis completed in Dr. Romano's team in the last 7 years.
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Publications	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data	Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal