The Orbital Express Demonstration System (OEDS) flight test successfully demonstrated technologies required to autonomously service satellites on-orbit. The mission's integrated robotics solution, the Orbital Express Demonstration Manipulator System (OEDMS) developed by MDA, performed critical flight test operations. The OEDMS comprised a six-jointed robotic manipulator arm and its avionics, non-proprietary servicing and ORU (Orbital Replacement Unit) interfaces, a vision and arm control system for autonomous satellite capture, and a suite of Ground Segment and Flight Segment software allowing script generation and execution under supervised or full autonomy. The arm was mounted on ASTRO, the servicer spacecraft developed by Boeing. The NextSat, developed by Ball Aerospace, served as the client satellite. The OEDMS demonstrated two key goals of the OEDS flight test: autonomous free-flyer capture and berthing of a client satellite, and autonomous transfer of ORUs from servicer to client and back. The paper provides a description of the OEDMS and the key operations it performed.

Date Published: 15 April 2008
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 6958, Sensors and Systems for Space Applications II, 695809 (15 April 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.784081

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6958:
Sensors and Systems for Space Applications II
Richard T. Howard; Pejmun Motaghedi, Editor(s)