Space Application Development at 'The On-Orbit Servicing and Autonomy' Group at the DLR

The On-Orbit Servicing and Autonomy group of the Space Flight Technology department conducts applied research for future missions in the fields On-Orbit Servicing and On-board Data Analysis and Real-time Information Systems. In On-Orbit Servicing, new Guidance, Navigation and Control concepts based on optical navigation are developed for the approach to non-cooperative targets like space debris or satellites at the end of their life-cycle. In the field of On-board Data Analysis and Real-Time Information Systems, the goal is the development of real-time on-board data processing systems that allow accessing information obtained from sensor data within minutes after recording of the data. Both of these applications require computationally expensive data processing that has to be executed directly on board the satellite. This brings two major challenges: The first challenge is to develop on-board computing systems powerful enough for these demanding applications. The second challenge is to lower the software system requirements to a point where a future modern on-board computer can handle the tasks. The current generation of on-board computer systems were meant for controlling a satellite and are far from being powerful enough to support data intensive applications. Therefore the development of these applications is done hand in hand with the development of a high performance on-board computing system within a DLR cooperation. In this article the difficulties, approaches and progress of space application development of our group in the last year are presented.