Future formation flying missions are being planned for fleets of spacecraft in MEO, GEO, and beyond where relative navigation using GPS will either be impossible or insufficient. To perform fleet estimation for these scenarios, local ranging devices on each vehicle are being considered to replace or augment the available GPS measurements. A previous paper presented several approaches for distri...

This paper describes a project concerned with the development of a mission planning system to provide automated planning assistance for the Air Force TechSat 21 formation-flying satellite cluster experiment: Spacecraft Cluster Automatic Planner/Scheduler (SpaceCAPS). The project’s focus is on planning and scheduling for payload management, but the system serves as a central planning system for ...

Virginia Tech has developed a testbed comprised of two independent spherical air-bearing platforms for formation flying attitude control simulation, the Distributed Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator. The DSACSS is intended to support a wide range of functions; as such, requiring that all controllers be robust to approximations of the system parameters is impractical. We document the ...

A decentralized architecture is proposed for autonomous establishment and maintenance of satellite formations. Such an architecture does not require a central supervisor, as the spacecraft can cooperatively track planned maneuvers and trajectories in the face of disturbances and uncertainties, while processing only local measurement information. If the planned maneuvers and trajectories are the...

Electromagnetic Formation Flight (EMFF) is a novel propellantless propulsion technology for formation flying satellites. Actuation in relative degrees of freedom for formation flight satellites is provided using electromagnetic forces and reaction wheels. One application for EMFF is stationkeeping for fractionated spacecraft architectures. The benefit of EMFF is that by replacing thrusters for ...

Microsatellites flying around big spacecraft can provide security monitoring for spacecrafts, extend mission functions, and provide an ideal platform for demonstrating and verifying key technologies of coordinated space missions. Most companion satellites have orbit manoeuvre capability. They usually take space station, aircraft, piloted spaceship, big satellite or other big spacecraft as task ...

High-precision relative-state measurement technology is one of the key technologies for achieving precision formation flying distributed spacecraft. This paper conducts a comprehensive analysis formation-flying projects spacecraft in various countries. In context practical application, specific mission configuration, orbit distribution, technology, and payload project are summarized. On this ba...

In this paper, we develop a detailed model of the process of image formation in MultiSpacecraft Interferometric Imaging Systems (MSIIS). We show that the Modulation Transfer Function of, and the noise corrupting, the synthesized optical instrument are dependent on the trajectories of the constituent spacecraft and obtain these explicit functional relationships. We show that “good” imaging using...

This paper demonstrates a detailed analysis of the feasibility for compact formation system around an L2-type artificial equilibrium point by means continuous low-thrust propulsion in hybrid form solar sail and Coulomb force propulsion. Firstly, view non-ideal sail, position numerical periodic orbits L2 utilized as leader’s nominal trajectory are given. Secondly, considering external disturbanc...