Engineers conduct first in-orbit test of ‘swarm’ satellite autonomous navigation | Science & Technology

“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.

All the angles

D’Amico described the challenge as one that has driven his team for more than a decade. “Our team has been advocating for distributed space systems since the lab’s inception. Now it has become mainstream. NASA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Space Force — all have understood the value of multiple assets in coordination to accomplish objectives which would otherwise be impossible or very difficult to achieve by a single spacecraft,” he said. “Advantages include improved accuracy, coverage, flexibility, robustness, and potentially new objectives not yet imagined.”

Robust navigation of the swarm presents a considerable technological…