• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
  • NEWS:
  • SatNews
  • SatMagazine
  • MilSatMagazine
  • SmallSat News
  • |     EVENTS:
  • SmallSat Symposium
  • Satellite Innovation
  • MilSat Symposium

SatNews

  • HOME
  • Magazines
  • Events
  • Perspectives
  • Industry Calendar
    • IN PERSON
    • VIRTUAL
  • Subscribe

Astrobotic Gains a NASA SBIR Phase II Award for Spacecraft Nav System

June 4, 2020

NASA has selected Astrobotic for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award to continue the firm’s development of UltraNav, a low-cost, autonomous, visual navigation system for spacecraft.

The system has wide-ranging applications, from the servicing of Earth satellites to journeys to challenging space destinations, such as the lunar poles or Martian mountains. UltraNav, short for Ultra-Compact Standalone Visual Relative Navigation, consists of a high-quality compact camera with a built-in computer carrying a proven suite of accelerated computer vision algorithms.

The system is optimized for space applications such as rendezvous and docking, precision planetary landing, and autonomous rover navigation. It can be packaged as a stand-alone sensor or part of a larger navigation system, customized with mission-specific algorithms, and integrated with a wide variety of spacecraft types, from smallsats all the way up to large human landers.

The visual navigation provided by UltraNav is critical for modern spacecraft operating at destinations beyond the reach of GPS, such as the Moon and deep space. In these settings, vision-based techniques can be used instead of GPS to accurately pinpoint a spacecraft’s location.

Even when GPS is available, visual navigation can ensure safety in critical maneuvers, such as those in the vicinity of other spacecraft. UltraNav performs visual navigation by taking pictures of the spacecraft’s surroundings, which may include a neighboring spacecraft or a planetary surface. Its algorithms then recognize features in those images and match them to preloaded maps with known dimensions. This in turn is used to calculate the spacecraft’s location relative to those features. As the spacecraft moves, so do the positions of the features in the images, enabling tracking of the spacecraft’s motion.

UltraNav is designed with a small size, weight, power consumption, and cost for the purpose of making advanced visual navigation and perception accessible to the broader commercial and low-budget space mission market. Traditionally, spacecraft with visual sensors require costly development to integrate disparate cameras, computers, and image processing software, limiting the use of these advanced technologies primarily to high-budget, flagship missions.

In addition to selling or licensing UltraNav to other spacecraft developers and companies, Astrobotic will use the technology for the firm’s own upcoming missions and vehicles, such as precision landing for its Peregrine lunar lander and visual navigation for its CubeRover and Polaris rovers.

Astrobotic’s UltraNav contract, valued at $750,000 over two years, is part of the NASA SBIR program’s annual investment in U.S. small businesses with promising new technologies whose benefits are strongly aligned with NASA’s future goals. The award will enable Astrobotic to continue and build upon the successful work performed on UltraNav under its prior NASA SBIR Phase I contract.

Chris Owens, Principal Investigator, said UltraNav builds on Astrobotic’s prior work developing inexpensive, reliable, and easy-to-use visual navigation tools, and demonstrates the company’s expertise in navigation and landing in GPS-denied applications. With the help of NASA SBIR funding, Astrobotic will continue to develop a compact visual space navigation system for use by smallsats, lunar landers, and surface rovers.

 

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

Most Read Stories

  • Miratlas Secures Million$€ In Seed Funding
  • Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace Enlists NanoAvionics For Three Surveillance Satellites
  • Satellite Laser Communication System Projected To Grow To Million$$$$ By 2030
  • A Major NATO Airborne Contract Goes To Horizon Technologies For Their Flying Fish™ Airborne SIGINT System
  • First Structural Metal Cutting In Space Demo By Nanoracks + Maxar Will Be Aboard The SpaceX Transporter 5 Rideshare Mission

About Satnews

  • Contacts
  • History

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020

Secondary Sidebar

x
Sign up Now (For Free)
Access daily or weekly satellite news updates covering all aspects of the commercial and military satellite industry.
Invalid email address
Notify Me Regarding ( At least one ):
We value your privacy and will not sell or share your email or other information with any other company. You may also unsubscribe at anytime.

Click Here to see our full privacy policy.
Thanks for subscribing!