For astronomical observing missions by formation flying satellites in LEO, satellites require control force to keep the relative position, against Keplerian orbit in an inertia coordinate frame. Since satellites require propulsion systems, i.e. thrusters, but the use of thrusters limits the mission lifetime associated with the finite fuel supply. Thus the authors propose the formation flight using electromagnetic force. In this method, the electromagnetic force between super-conducting magnets are used for the relative position control. This method has the obvious advantage of no-fuel to acquire control force. Since such large magnetic moment in earth magnetism generates large disturbance torque, the magnetic moments should be sinusoidal with shorter period than that of the orbit period. Therefore, this paper proposes the relative position control by changing the phase difference between sinusoidal magnetic moments. The proposed method was evaluated with numerical simulations and the results shows the feasibility of the proposed formation flight.
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