Given its success and healthy status, the NASA Starling 1.0 mission has been extended all the way to December 2025 as Starling 1.5. Under a new award from the NASA Small Spacecraft Technology Program, (SSTP), the Stanford Space Rendezvous Laboratory is developing StarFOX+ for the extended mission phase. As part of StarFOX+, we will demonstrate increase performance and brand-new capabilities of the Angles-only Absolute and Relative Trajectory Measurement System (ARTMS). Besides applying all the precious lessons learned from Starling 1.0, ARTMS will include in real-time and on-board:
1) Data-fusion with inter-satellite ranging across swarm (4x 6U CubeSats)
2) Identification of unknown resident space objects crossing the field of view
3) Auxiliary state estimation, including clock-offsets and force model parameters
4) New algorithms for fast short-arc orbit determination
5) Adaptive measurement and state noise compensation
The opportunity that NASA and Starling are giving us are almost incredible. And we are ready to make disruptive changes to the state-of-practice!
For flight results on Starling 1.0 check:
Kruger, J., Hwang, S. S., D'Amico, S.; Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment: Initial Operations and Flight Results; 38th Small Satellite Conference, Logan, Utah, August 3-8, 2024.
