The joint ESA/NASA LISA mission consists in three spacecraft on heliocentric orbits, flying in a triangular formation of 5 Mkm each side, linked by infrared optical beams. The aim of the mission is to detect gravitational waves in a low frequency band. For properly processing the scientific data, the propagation delays between spacecraft must be accurately known. We thus analyse the propagation...

We present the enabling concept and technology for a dual spacecraft formation-flying optical interferometer, to be launched into a deep space orbit as Space Technology 3. The combiner spacecraft makes use of a nested cat’s eye delay line configuration that minimizes wavefront distortion and stores 20 m of optical pathlength in a package of ∼ 1.5 m length. A parabolic trajectory for the seconda...

An Adaptive Control Approach to Satellite Formation Flying With Relative Distance Constraints Jonathan Lawton Randal W. Beard Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Brigham Young University Fred Y. Hadaegh Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Abstract In this paper we present a spacecraft control for rigid eet rotations. This is done by creating a eet template wh...

We introduce a decentralized attitude control strategy that can dramatically reduce the usage of propellant, by taking full advantage of the physical coupling of the tether. Motivated by a controllability analysis, indicating that both spin-up and relative attitudes are fully controllable by the reaction wheels, we report the first propellant-free underactuated linear and nonlinear control resu...

The satellite formation flying system is a collaborative system where multiple satellites cooperate in a formation to perform consensus mission in space LEO (Low-Earth-Orbit) through librations points. In recent years, this kind of formation flying systems are getting attention because of reduced cost of mission, failures and recovery and flexibility. If one big spacecraft is at a mission and i...

This paper considers the problem of relative position control for multiple spacecraft formation flying (MSFF) without velocity measurements. Specifically, the nonlinear dynamics describing the relative positioning of MSFF are used to develop a nonlinear, output feedback control law that guarantees the global uniform ultimate boundedness of the position and velocity tracking errors, despite the ...

Spacecraft formation flying is a proposed technology with vast performance implications ranging from enhanced mission capabilities to radical reductions in operations cost. To explore this concept and to enable its realization, Stanford University and Santa Clara University have initiated development of a simple, low cost, twosatellite mission known as Emerald. The Emerald mission has four prim...