SmallSatSim: A GPU-Accelerated Microgravity Robotics Toolkit for Planning, Control, and Policy Learning

arXiv:2603.14598 · cs.RO · Submitted 2026-03-15 · Read on arXiv

cs.RO

Submitted: 2026-03-15

Updated: 2026-09-19

Code: https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacSim

Terminology

• Reinforcement Learning — 14× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Fidelity — 11× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Benchmark — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Actor — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Proximal Policy Optimization — 2× in this paper
• Reinforcement Learning (RL) — 2× in this paper · explained in 25 episodes
• Robustness — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Transformer — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Abstraction — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Adaptation — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Adaptive Planning — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Benchmarking — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Deep Reinforcement Learning — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Failure Modes — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Model Predictive Control (MPC) — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Modular Architecture — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes

Sources

• Agile Tradespace Exploration for Space Rendezvous Mission Design via Transformers
• Open-Source High-Fidelity Orbit Estimation for Planetary Science and Space Situational Awareness Using the Tudat Software
• Brax -- A Differentiable Physics Engine for Large Scale Rigid Body Simulation
• Gymnasium: A Standard Interface for Reinforcement Learning Environments
• RLlib: Abstractions for Distributed Reinforcement Learning
• High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimation
• Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms

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