Novel robotic spacecraft simulator with mini-control moment gyroscopes and rotating thrusters

A novel hardware-in-the-loop spacecraft simulator is introduced for the laboratory validation of guidance, navigation and control algorithms. This three-degrees-of-freedom robotic vehicle uses the principle of air-floating along a flat floor in order to reproduce in two dimensions the frictionless and weightlessness conditions of the orbital flight. For the first time in its class, to the authors' knowledge, the new spacecraft simulator uses miniature control moment gyroscopes for the attitude control and rotating thrusters for both attitude and translational control. A pseudo-GPS, a LIDAR and a fiber optic gyroscope are used as navigation sensors. The paper presents in details the design of the robotic vehicle and the results of preliminary experiments.