Auroral Cluster is a space physics mission that has been identified by the NASA Space Physics Strategic Implementation Study as a candidate fur flight in the next decade. Auroral Cluster will employ multiple spacecraft outfitted with similar complements of science instruments allowing simultaneous multipoint plasma measurements in the Earth's auroral regions. Co-orbiting small satellites (mass ...

The formation-flying satellite cluster is a new paradigm for space-based surveillance and remote sensing. In this paradigm, several small satellites fly in close formation and coordinate their activities so that through sparse-array interferometric and synthetic aperture techniques the cluster can effectively operate as though it were a much larger monolithic satellite. Management of such clust...

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 ...

After 12 years of operations, the Cluster mission continues to successfully fulfil its scientific objectives. The main goal of the Cluster mission, comprised of four identical spacecraft, is to study in three dimensions small-scale plasma structures in key plasma regions of the Earth’s environment: solar wind and bow shock, magnetopause, polar cusps, magnetotail, plasmasphere and auroral zone. ...

Ground-based facilities make an important contribution to our understanding of the magnetospheric system. Coordination with ground-based has been embedded within Cluster mission since before launch, and this given rise a large number studies which have exploited data from both one or more diverse range instrumentation that available during timespan. In paper, we review advances made magnetosphe...

There is an increasing desire in many organizations, including NASA and the DoD, to use constellations or fleets of autonomous spacecraft working together to accomplish complex mission objectives. At the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate we are investigating and developing architectures for commanding and controlling a cluster of cooperating satellites. For many ...