NASA's Raven Ready for ISS

The fact we take had a infinite station circling the Earth for well-nigh 20 years demonstrates the talent present inside NASA. But infinite is hard, and there'south lots of procedures u.s.a. humans still haven't figured out how to do exterior of World's atmosphere. 1 of those is a relative navigation system, which would permit a satellite to be visited by a service craft without human involvement.

That is the trouble the Raven technology module aims to gear up, and information technology's nearly to exist sent to the International Space Station aboard the 10th SpaceX commercial resupply mission.

Satellites already orbiting World have not been designed for servicing and therefore don't have any markings as a guide for an budgeted autonomous service craft. They are also traveling at 16,000mph in the dark, calculation to the complexity of making such a system work reliably and without a catastrophic collision occurring.

Raven is roughly the same size as a slice of comport-on luggage and needs to human action as a satellite hunter. The final version will used an advanced car vision arrangement to identify a satellite, effigy out and lucifer its speed, and then proceed catch it if necessary.

For now, Raven is a piece of work in progress. One time at ISS information technology will exist fastened to the exterior payload platform and used to rail time to come infinite arts and crafts visiting and leaving the infinite station. Tracking involves collecting data from a range of sensors Raven uses and applying pose algorithms to information technology. NASA will then evaluate and tweak Raven's tech to improve the accuracy of the tracking. The desired event: a very authentic relative navigation module which can be attached to an autonomous service space craft in the hereafter.

Raven is expected to stay fastened to ISS for two years in order to perfect its tracking. After that, Raven tech will be used as part of the Restore-50 servicing mission, which intends to refuel the Landsat vii World-observing satellite. if everything goes to plan, Raven will then probable head to Mars.