Modern Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control

Book excerpt: Modern Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control: From System Modeling to AI and Innovative Applications provides a comprehensive foundation of theory and applications of spacecraft GNC, from fundamentals to advanced concepts, including modern AI-based architectures with focus on hardware and software practical applications. Divided into four parts, this book begins with an introduction to spacecraft GNC, before discussing the basic tools for GNC applications. These include an overview of the main reference systems and planetary models, a description of the space environment, an introduction to orbital and attitude dynamics, and a survey on spacecraft sensors and actuators, with details of their modeling principles. Part 2 covers guidance, navigation, and control, including both on-board and ground-based methods. It also discusses classical and novel control techniques, failure detection isolation and recovery (FDIR) methodologies, GNC verification, validation, and on-board implementation. The final part 3 discusses AI and modern applications featuring different applicative scenarios, with particular attention on artificial intelligence and the possible benefits when applied to spacecraft GNC. In this part, GNC for small satellites and CubeSats is also discussed. Modern Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, and Control: From System Modeling to AI and Innovative Applications is a valuable resource for aerospace engineers, GNC/AOCS engineers, avionic developers, and AIV/AIT technicians. - Provides an overview of classical and modern GNC techniques, covering practical system modeling aspects and applicative cases - Presents the most important artificial intelligence algorithms applied to present and future spacecraft GNC - Describes classical and advanced techniques for GNC hardware and software verification and validation and GNC failure detection isolation and recovery (FDIR)