TriDAR Test Results Onboard Final Shuttle Mission , Applications for Future of Non-Cooperative Autonomous Rendezvous & Docking

This paper presents results from the final Space Shuttle test flight of the TriDAR vision system onboard Shuttle Atlantis on STS-135. The TriDAR (Triangulation + LIDAR) is a proximity operations 3D vision system for Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking (AR&D) missions to non-cooperative targets in space. The TriDAR has previously flown on STS-128 and STS-131 onboard Shuttle Discovery. The objectives of the TriDAR demonstrations were to demonstrate automatic acquisition and real-time embedded tracking of the International Space Station (ISS) without use of cooperative targets, detection and recovery from loss of tracking, and real-time navigation cues to crew. This paper details the enhancements made for this last demonstration mission to further improve performance and maturity of the technology.