Design, Testing, and Analysis of Self Toss Hopping Maneuvers of Astrobee at NPS and NASA Ames Research Center

Robotic hopping is a novel approach to microgravity mobility for a small spacecraft to use a robotic arm manipulator to toss a vehicle toward a destination. The Spacecraft Robotics Laboratory (SRL) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has demonstrated the viability of this mobility approach on its microgravity research testbed, POSEIDYN. SRL shall attempt this mobility approach with NASA’s Astrobee free-flyer, a small robotic research platform designed to operate in microgravity, onboard the International Space Station. In preparation for this experimental campaign, self-toss maneuvers were tested at both NPS and at NASA Ames Research Center. These maneuvers were performed using Astrobee’s existing perching arm, and a variety of initial and end angles were tested for both the distal and proximal joints of the arm. This thesis analyzed these results and presented the path ahead for SRL’s research with Astrobee.