This paper presents the simulation results for the reconfiguration and maintenance of a novel three-satellites formation flying mission study. The analyses are based on a decentralized approach for the guidance, navigation, and control, to provide autonomous management of the formation flying by each satellite. The mission concept under analysis is developed in the remote-sensing field, to improve the performances of the Earth's observation missions for land and oceans applications and it is proposed as the new generation of ESA's SMOS mission. An in-house simulation suite, based on GNSS navigation, is used to assess the performances of the navigation and the control during nominal and nonnominal phases of the mission. The high-fidelity simulation analyses aim at assessing realistic performances of the proposed guidance and control strategies, based on low-thrust engine actuators. The work opens to the design of future formation flying missions in the Earth observation field, providing a baseline for the guidance, navigation, and control simulator.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.