The Orbital Express Demonstration System (OEDS) flight test successfully demonstrated technologies required to
autonomously service satellites on-orbit. The mission's integrated robotics solution, the Orbital Express Demonstration
Manipulator System (OEDMS) developed by MDA, performed critical flight test operations. The OEDMS comprised a
six-jointed robotic manipulator arm and its avionics,
non-proprietary servicing and ORU (Orbital Replacement Unit)
interfaces, a vision and arm control system for autonomous satellite capture, and a suite of Ground Segment and Flight
Segment software allowing script generation and execution under supervised or full autonomy. The arm was mounted on
ASTRO, the servicer spacecraft developed by Boeing. The NextSat, developed by Ball Aerospace, served as the client
satellite. The OEDMS demonstrated two key goals of the OEDS flight test: autonomous free-flyer capture and berthing
of a client satellite, and autonomous transfer of ORUs from servicer to client and back. The paper provides a description
of the OEDMS and the key operations it performed.
KEYWORDS: Device simulation, Robotics, Hubble Space Telescope, Robotic systems, Control systems, Cameras, Systems modeling, Space operations, Servomechanisms, Electromagnetic simulation
This paper addresses contact dynamics simulations for a Hubble Robotic Servicing mission. First, the modeling of the robotic system is introduced. The simulation models of the robotic system include: flexible body dynamics, control system models and geometric models of the contacting bodies. These models are incorporated into MDA's simulation facility, the multibody dynamics simulator "Space Station Portable Operations Training Simulator (SPOTS)". Three contact dynamics simulation examples of the robotic servicing operations are presented: (1) capture of the Hubble Space Telescope, (2) berthing the Hubble Space Telescope to the Hubble Robotic Vehicle and (3) inserting the Wide Field Camera into the Hubble Space Telescope.
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