AUTONOMOUS AND NON-INTRUSIVE SYSTEM FOR ENHANCED SPACE VEHICLE LOCATION

Abstract

High-precision location of space launch vehicles is a key component of the flight safety. The need for a very accurate location has gained the whole launch with the flight and re-entry stages being also critical in terms of safety. Thanks to the hybridization of GNSS and INS data, the accurate location can be fully defined inside the launch vehicle at low cost. This opens up to the setting of an autonomous system for location on-board the vehicle. Still, in order to ensure the reliability of such a system, many redundancies have to be set which implies to add equipment: autonomous power, processing, unique telemetry downlink... Adding this equipment challenging in an environment where the use of room and the adding of weight are very tightly monitored. This paper describes the techniques to settle a fully autonomous location system which answers to the needs for an accurate, strongly reliable location while being non-intrusive, cost-effective and easily integrated in any launch vehicle.