Guidance and control systems determine and regulate everything from the trajectory of a vehicle to how much fuel it burns and when. Thus, these systems are vital to the performance of satellites, rockets, and spacecraft in orbit and when moving through space. Space travel and the use of communications and other types of satellites would be impossible without the thousands of individual components that constitute guidance and control systems.

Piloted and Unpiloted Guidance

In piloted spacecraft, guidance control is usually an automatic process—that is, controlled by the ground-based support crew. But astronauts also have the capability of guiding their craft, in order to fine-tune their orbit or interstellar path, maneuver the spacecraft to a target, and as a fallback system in case of ground-based guidance failure.

Unpiloted craft, such as a rocket (essentially a tube mounted on an explosive motor), has...