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Mark Adler
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Optical navigation would be more than sufficient. Images of the Moon and the Earth against key stars, a clock, and a computer is all you need. Apollo had such a system as a backup, which was used to verify the ground tracking results.

This is the Apollo sextant:

Apollo sextant

The definition of "autonomous" in the document is:

Autonomous: Ability of a space system to perform operations independent from any Earth-based systems. This includes no communication with, or real-time support from, mission control or other Earth systems.

So indeed the orbit determination would need to be possible using only on-board resources. Though you need to be able to look at the Earth, so hopefully the Earth itself is not considered an Earth system.

Mark Adler
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  • 253