Space Rendezvous Laboratory

The Space Rendezvous Laboratory (SLAB) is a research and development laboratory of the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University founded and led by Professor Simone D’Amico. SLAB performs fundamental and applied research at the intersection of Astrodynamics and Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) to enable future distributed space systems. These include but are not limited to spacecraft formation-flying, rendezvous and docking, swarms, and fractionated space architectures. The vision of SLAB is that multi-satellite systems will help humanity addressing fundamental questions of space science, technology, and exploration. In order to respond to the ever increasing demand of positioning accuracy posed by these missions, SLAB’s objective is to develop, validate, and embed the necessary cutting-edge technologies into a formation of micro- and nano-satellites to be launched in space in the next decade. To this end, high-fidelity hardware-in-the-loop testbeds are under development including spaceborne radio-frequency and optical navigation sensors. The research at SLAB is based on more than 10 years of experience in the implementation and flight operations of GN&C subsystems for formation-flying and on-orbit servicing missions (e.g., GRACE, TanDEM-X, PRISMA, BIROS, DEOS, etc.). Ultimately partnerships at national and international level will pave the way for breakthrough demonstrations of new technology.

Website

https://damicos.people.stanford.edu/

External link for Space Rendezvous Laboratory

Industry

Research Services

Company size

11-50 employees

Headquarters

Stanford, California

Type

Educational

Founded

2013

Specialties

Distributed Space Systems, Spacecraft Formation-Flying, Rendezvous and Docking, Fractionated Space Architectures, Astrodynamics, Spaceborne Radio-frequency and Optical Navigation, Autonomous Micro- and Nano-satellites, Angles-Only Navigation Using Relative Orbital Elements, Vision-based Monocular Vision Navigation, Impulsive Formation Keeping and Reconfiguration, High-Fidelity Simulation, Testing and Validation for Multi-Satellite Systems, and Innovative Guidance, Navigation, and Control