Formation flight has long been performed by many species of birds for its social and aerodynamic benefits. The traditional "V" shape formation flown by birds not only helped communication between individuals, but also decreased the induced drag for each trailing bird, and thus reduced the energy required for flying (Weimerskirch et al. 2001). The benefits of formation flight have also been eval...

This paper investigates the non-equilibrium fixed-shape three-craft Coulomb formation reconfiguration problem. Being aware of that using the feedback control approach might result in the chattering of the charges due to the non-equilibrium nature of the system dynamics, this paper proposes a trajectory planning approach to accomplish the reconfiguration. The entire maneuver trajectories are div...

Historically, sensor noise has been a key factor in the analysis of system performance for formation flying spacecraft. Since most interesting formation missions require coordination between multiple spacecraft, knowledge of the relative states must be as accurate as possible. This knowledge is typically used to design a trajectory to meet specific criteria, such as minimizing fuel use or maint...

In recent years, a growing number of space missions have emerged which are utilizing distributed systems of satellites. This is accompanied by a rising level of interest in both the scientific and defense communities to develop mature systems and software for autonomous rendezvous and formation flying. An underlying requirement for these types of missions is the need to ensure safe, collision-f...

Previous studies for small formation flying dynamics about triangular libration points have determined the existence of regions of zero and minimum relative radial acceleration with respect to the nominal trajectory, that prevent from the expansion or contraction of the constellation. However, these studies only considered the gravitational force of the Earth and the Moon using the Circular Res...

XEUS, the X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy mission, constitutes at present an ESA-ISAS initiative for the study of the evolution of the hot Universe in the postChandra/XMM-Newton era. The key science objectives of XEUS can be formulated as the: – Search for the origin, and subsequent study of growth, of the first massive black holes in the early Universe. – Assessment of the formation of th...

This paper describes a novel control scheme termed ‘equilibrium shaping’ for the control of a swarm of spacecraft in both flat and curved space. This control scheme allows the intelligent and autonomous control of an arbitrary number of elements, suitable for example to self-assembly or formation flying applications. The control scheme employs three basis behaviours that are summed together to ...

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) opens a new era in space borne radar remote sensing. A single-pass SAR-interferometer with adjustable baselines in acrossand in along-track directions is formed by adding a second (TDX), almost identical spacecraft, to TerraSAR-X (TSX) and flying the two satellites in a closely controlled formation. TDX has SAR system parameters whi...

In recent years, formation flying has become an enabling technology for several mission concepts at both NASA and the Department of Defense. In most cases, a multiple-satellite approach is required in order to accomplish the large-scale geometries imposed by the sensing objectives. In general, the paradigm shift of using a multiple-satellite cluster rather than a large, monolithic spacecraft ha...