Optimal cooperative control for formation flying spacecraft with collision avoidance

Energy Suboptimal Collision-Free Reconfiguration for Spacecraft Formation Flying

Model Predictive Control for Formation Flying Spacecraft

Formation flying is an enabling technology for many future space missions. This thesis addresses some of the key dynamics and control issues expected in future missions by pursuing two areas of advancement: extensions of relative linear dynamics models and assessment and mitigation of sensor noise effects on control systems. Relative dynamics models play an important role in finding drift-free ...

Attitude Tracking Control for Spacecraft Formation Flying

We develop a non-linear tracking control law to be applied to formation flying spacecraft. Each spacecraft in the formation is modeled as a rigid body with N axisymmetric wheels controlled by axial torques, and the kinematics are represented by Modified Rodriques Parameters (MRPs). The paper first derives the open-loop reference attitude, rate, and acceleration commands for tracking a moving ob...

Optimal Trajectory Planning of Formation Flying Spacecraft

This paper introduces a closed-loop Guidance and Control optimal algorithm that balances the propellant consumption and the need for collision avoidance among formation ‡ying spacecraft. This model-based algorithm is purely algebraic and computes the spacecraft trajectories from the knowledge of the formation linearized relative dynamics equations and the formation full state. Using Pontryagin’...

Guidance and Control of Formation Flying Spacecraft

A key element of NASA’s future space exploration is high precision formation flying (FF) for space interferometry. Precision FF has never been attempted before and poses new and significant challenges to the underlying control system. While the guidance and control (G&C) methodologies of single spacecraft for traditional planetary flyby and orbiter missions are well-understood, the G&C of FF mi...