The level of autonomy necessary for exploration requires on-board, real-time, automatic
spacecraft navigational fault tolerance.  Our work enables this capability through
intelligent analysis of measurements from existing navigational sensors (as opposed to
additional sensors needed only for fault tolerance).  We have demonstrated capabilities
for thruster FDI and mass property identification using the MIT SPHERES spacecraft in
2D (air-bearing table).  A flight experiment on the ISS is planned for later in FY'05.
Once extended and validated, our work will provide a capability for software-only
thruster-fault tolerance for thruster-controlled spacecraft with gyros-a broad class of
vehicles. The on-line mass and thruster-property ID technology may benefit an even
broader class of applications, as accurate mass property information can be used by
spacecraft control and planning algorithms to optimize system performance (e.g.,
minimize fuel consumption, thruster plume impingement, camera pointing error, etc.).

TRL: 6 (integrated with SPHERES and ready for deployment for ISS experiments)