FALCON ( Fast Autonomous Lost-in-space Catalog-based Optical Navigation ) - A GPS free space navigation technology successfully demonstrated
NASA’s Starling mission has marked another milestone in spacecraft autonomy by using a new system that determines a satellite’s position in orbit by referencing other objects in space, instead of relying on a navigational network.
The FALCON (Fast Autonomous Lost-in-space Catalog-based Optical Navigation) technology demonstration is a step toward spacecraft being able to operate more independently. As NASA prepares for more missions beyond Earth’s orbit, technologies like FALCON can support lunar satellite swarms, distributed science missions, and human exploration.
Traditional satellite navigation depends on GPS signals, but those can be unreliable or unavailable in lunar or deep space environments. The FALCON payload is a joint flight experiment by NASA and EraDrive, a startup spun out from Stanford University. It combines EraDrive’s Era-Core flight software and embedded algorithms with Starling’s cameras and an onboard catalog of known satellites to support GPS-independent navigation and space situational awareness.
Working principle:
The FALCON demonstration tested two complementary capabilities that made creative use of Starling’s onboard star-tracker cameras, standard instruments that identify bright objects in space to inform a spacecraft’s orientation and position. In position, navigation, and timing experiments, it matched objects that the spacecraft’s cameras observed – including other spacecraft and orbital debris – to a catalog of known space objects maintained and made publicly available by the U.S. Department of War. FALCON then used the observed and verified objects as reference points to determine Starling’s orbit.
In separate experiments, FALCON successfully refined the orbit estimates of the space objects observed by Starling’s cameras. The mission team loaded the full catalog of approximately 20,000 space objects and their predicted orbits onto the spacecraft. FALCON then correlated that data with the observations of other space objects made by the spacecraft’s cameras to estimate Starling’s location – and the locations of other space objects – with even greater precision than the current catalog data. During a three-day period, FALCON improved the known orbits of more than 200 objects without intervention from operators on the ground.
The self-orbit determination capability made possible through FALCON is a first for spacecraft using optical cameras to navigate by their relative position to other objects in space. Separately, the catalog-update experiments produced better object position predictions onboard Starling than those provided by ground stations.
Advantages over Traditional GPS Technology:
Coordinated networks of multiple GPS-free satellites will be critical to support surface operations for future human exploration of the Moon or Mars. For science missions, knowing the precise location of each spacecraft is necessary for aligning measurements taken from multiple points in space. And for space traffic management, autonomous navigation and catalog updates can reduce reliance on ground networks and enhance collision avoidance.
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