Preprint finds orbital drifting cuts fuel use in autonomous spacecraft inspection

Researchers report in a preprint that autonomous spacecraft inspection can save fuel by allowing a spacecraft to drift, tracking where that drift takes it and planning far enough ahead to capture the benefit. Removing any one of those design features doubled fuel use or more in controlled evaluations. The study also found that a model-based agent whose learned model ignored fuel spent several times more of it. A safety filter beneath the decision layer eliminated every violation of zones the spacecraft was required to avoid across two thousand evaluation episodes. The authors caution that learned policies are not safe by construction.