Science enabled by high precision inertial formation flying

Abstract

The capability of maintaining two satellites in precise relative position, stable in a celestial coordinate system, would enable major advances in a number of scientific disciplines and with a variety of types of instrumentation. The common requirement is for formation flying of two spacecraft with the direction of their vector separation in inertial coordinates precisely controlled and accurately determined as a function of time. We consider here the scientific goals that could be achieved with such technology and review some of the proposals that have been made for specific missions. Types of instrumentation that will benefit from the development of this type of formation flying include 1) imaging systems, in which an optical element on one spacecraft forms a distant image recorded by a detector array on the other spacecraft, including telescopes capable of very high angular resolution; 2) systems in which the front spacecraft of a pair carries an occulting disk, allowing very high dynamic range observations of the solar corona and exoplanets; 3) interferometers, another class of instrument that aims at very high angular resolution and which, though usually requiring more than two spacecraft, demands very much the same developments.Comment: To be published in "Int. J. Space Science and Engineering". This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the "5th International Conference on Spacecraft Formation Flying Missions and Technologies(SFFMT)", Munich, May 201

Review of Formation Flying and Constellation Missions Using Nanosatellites

“…The requirements on position and attitude knowledge for state-of-the-art science missions are discussed in [112].…”

Relative Orbit Control Algorithms and Scenarios for the Inertial Alignment Hold Demonstration Mission by CubeSat Formation Flying

“…To achieve longer focal lengths in the X-ray and gamma-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, formation flying can be advantageous [19]. There have been numerous proposals for X-ray imaging missions, including XEUS (X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy), Simbol-X, and FLIP-3 [16,20,21].…”

“…At the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, quasi-continuous aligned observation was attainable with a control accuracy of within 2 cm in the transverse direction and 25 cm in the axial direction. Milli-Arc-Second Structure IMager (MASSIM) is a mission concept that employs transmissive, refractive, and diffractive optics and aims for X-ray astrophysical measurements in space [15,19,22]. To achieve a milliarcsecond angular resolution, the MASSIM requires 1000 km of inter-spacecraft separation, within 25 mm of transverse displacement, and 10 km of axial offset.…”

“…The formation will be located at L2 and will have 1-10 days to observe the celestial target. Fresnel and MAXIM were created as extreme versions of MASSIM, with the goal of achieving microarcsecond angular resolution [15,[19][20][21][22][23][24]. With a 5-10 m-diameter lens and a focal length of 10 5 -10 6 km, gamma-ray detection will examine the event horizon surrounding supermassive black holes.…”