Assessing Autonomous Inspection Regimes: Active Versus Passive Satellite Inspection

This paper addresses the problem of satellite inspection, where one or more satellites (inspectors) are tasked with imaging or inspecting a resident space object (RSO) due to potential malfunctions or anomalies. Inspection strategies are often reduced to a discretized action space with predefined waypoints, facilitating tractability in both classical optimization and machine learning based approaches. However, this discretization can lead to suboptimal guidance in certain scenarios. This study presents a comparative simulation to explore the tradeoffs of passive versus active strategies in multi-agent missions. Key factors considered include RSO dynamic mode, state uncertainty, unmodeled entrance criteria, and inspector motion types. The evaluation is conducted with a focus on fuel utilization and surface coverage. Building on a Monte-Carlo based evaluator of passive strategies and a reinforcement learning framework for training active inspection policies, this study investigates conditions under which passive strategies, such as Natural Motion Circumnavigation (NMC), may perform comparably to active strategies like Reinforcement Learning based waypoint transfers.

Exposure-Based Multi-Agent Inspection of a Tumbling Target Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

As space becomes more congested, on orbit inspection is an increasingly relevant activity whether to observe a defunct satellite for planning repairs or to de-orbit it. However, the task of on orbit inspection itself is challenging, typically requiring the careful coordination of multiple observer satellites. This is complicated by a highly nonlinear environment where the target may be unknown or moving unpredictably without time for continuous command and control from the ground. There is a need for autonomous, robust, decentralized solutions to the inspection task. To achieve this, we consider a hierarchical, learned approach for the decentralized planning of multi-agent inspection of a tumbling target. Our solution consists of two components: a viewpoint or high-level planner trained using deep reinforcement learning and a navigation planner handling point-to-point navigation between pre-specified viewpoints. We present a novel problem formulation and methodology that is suitable not only to reinforcement learning-derived robust policies, but extendable to unknown target geometries and higher fidelity information theoretic objectives received directly from sensor inputs. Operating under limited information, our trained multi-agent high-level policies successfully contextualize information within the global hierarchical environment and are correspondingly able to inspect over 90% of non-convex tumbling targets, even in the absence of additional agent attitude control.