The fact we have had a space station circling the Earth for nearly 20 years demonstrates the talent present inside NASA. But space is hard, and there's lots of procedures us humans still haven't figured out how to do outside of Earth's atmosphere. One of those is a relative navigation system, which would allow a satellite to be visited by a service craft without human involvement.
That is the problem the Raven technology module aims to fix, and it's about to be sent to the International Space Station aboard the 10th SpaceX commercial resupply mission.
Satellites already orbiting Earth have not been designed for servicing and therefore don't have any markings as a guide for an approaching autonomous service craft. They are also traveling at 16,000mph in the dark, adding to the complexity of making such a system work reliably and without a catastrophic collision occurring.
Raven is roughly the same size as a piece of carry-on luggage and needs to act as a satellite hunter. The final version will used an advanced machine vision system to identify a satellite, figure out and match its speed, and then proceed catch it if necessary.
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For now, Raven is a work in progress. Once at ISS it will be attached to the exterior payload platform and used to track future space craft visiting and leaving the space station. Tracking involves collecting data from a range of sensors Raven uses and applying pose algorithms to it. NASA will then evaluate and tweak Raven's tech to improve the accuracy of the tracking. The desired outcome: a very accurate relative navigation module which can be attached to an autonomous service space craft in the future.
Raven is expected to stay attached to ISS for two years in order to perfect its tracking. After that, Raven tech will be used as part of the Restore-L servicing mission, which intends to refuel the Landsat 7 Earth-observing satellite. if everything goes to plan, Raven will then likely head to Mars.