Survey on Guidance Navigation and Control Requirements for Spacecraft Formation-Flying Missions

Mauro, Giuseppe Di; Lawn, Margaret; Bevilacqua, Riccardo

doi:10.2514/1.g002868

Cited by 128 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Studies on design [6][7][8][9][10], guidance [11][12][13], navigation [14][15][16][17], and control [18][19][20][21][22] of spacecraft formations are widely available in the literature. More comprehensive reviews of these studies can be found in recent survey papers [23][24][25][26]. However, only a small fraction of these studies address the alignment of a formation with an inertial target.…”

Section: B State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation Design of Distributed Telescopes in Earth Orbit for Astrophysics Applications

Koenig

Macintosh

D’Amico

2019

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: B State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation Design of Distributed Telescopes in Earth Orbit for Astrophysics Applications

Koenig

Macintosh

D’Amico

2019

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In fact, the use of multiple spacecraft operating in a coordinated way allows improving the mission performance, while providing increased adaptability, versatility, and robustness. In light of this, different national space agencies, government research, and development centers as well as numerous universities and private companies have designed and funded more than 20 formation flying missions in the last two decades and plan to launch another 10 within the next 10 years [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimum-Fuel Control Strategy for Spacecraft Formation Reconfiguration via Finite-Time Maneuvers

Mauro

Spiller

Carnà

et al. 2019

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper addresses the minimum-fuel spacecraft formation reconfiguration maneuver in J 2 perturbed nearcircular orbits. In this study, only the deputy is assumed to be maneuverable and capable of providing a piecewise constant control thrust. The optimal control problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem. To make the proposed strategy compliant with the requirements deriving from a realistic flight scenario, the collision avoidance and the maneuvering time constraints dictated by mission operations are included in the mathematical formulation. A linear dynamics model based on relative orbit elements parameterization and its associated closedform solution are used to impose the boundary conditions, avoiding the dynamics integration within the optimization process. Several examples are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

show abstract

“…In a recent survey of the guidance, navigation and control of spacecraft formations, Di Mauro et al state that the relative position of spacecraft in formation should be controllable to an accuracy of two orders of magnitude less than the spacecraft separation distance. [4] This general desired formation accuracy given is validated by looking at some past formation flying missions and the relative position accuracy that they were able to achieve. For example, the TanDEM-X mission's required control accuracy was 20 meters in the radial and crosstrack directions and 200 meters in the alongtrack direction, with spacecraft separation ranging from 150 meters up to a few kilometers [2,4], and the PRISMA mission required position control of 25 meter accuracy with separation distances ranging from 100 to 2000 meters.…”

Section: Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[4] This general desired formation accuracy given is validated by looking at some past formation flying missions and the relative position accuracy that they were able to achieve. For example, the TanDEM-X mission's required control accuracy was 20 meters in the radial and crosstrack directions and 200 meters in the alongtrack direction, with spacecraft separation ranging from 150 meters up to a few kilometers [2,4], and the PRISMA mission required position control of 25 meter accuracy with separation distances ranging from 100 to 2000 meters. [3] The CanX-4…”

Section: Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…and CanX-5 spacecraft, two small satellites used to demonstrate precision spacecraft formation flying, were able to achieve control accuracy to within a meter, with relative separation distances of approximately 50 to 1000 meters. [4,5] It should be noted that each of these spacecraft formations involves relatively low eccentricity orbits, and that 1 A Keplerian orbit assumes a spacecraft of negligible mass orbiting a body of point mass (or equivalent to a point mass) with no external perturbations increasing the eccectricity of the orbits in the formation would tend to derease the accuracy of the relative position control.…”

Section: Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spacecraft Formation Guidance and Control on J2-Perturbed Eccentric Orbits

Kuiack¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spacecraft formation flying is currently an important and thriving area of research, with plenty of unique challenges to overcome in the field of spacecraft dynamics, and a wide variety of useful applications if these challenges may be overcome. The guidance of the relative motion of a spacecraft formation is an area of particular interest.Conventional space missions typically require a guidance system which outputs the desired orbit of a single spacecraft. However, in a formation, the position of one spacecraft relative to another is of greater interest, and thus the guidance system must handle the more difficult task of determining the desired relative motion of the formation.Many models for spacecraft formation flying exist, but all have their limitations, either in accuracy due to assumptions made in their derivation like using circular orbits or neglecting important orbit perturbations, or in computational efficiency by requiring numerical integration. This thesis presents a novel set of analytical equations of motion describing the position of a follower spacecraft relative to a leader spacecraft in formation which is valid for eccentric orbits and which incorporates the so-called J 2 perturbation. This set of three equations, one for each priniciple direction in the local-vertical-local-horizontal reference frame, is then validated for accuracy by comparison with a numerical simulator. Finally, the equations are verified in a number of practical applications, focussing on their use as a guidance system in spacecraft formation guidance and control simulations.iii Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor Steve Ulrich for giving me the opportunity to pursue this work, for his support and encouragement along the way, and most of all for his patience, understanding and kindness throughout this project. Certainly none of this would have been possible without his help. I would also like to thank my family who are all always there for me, especially my parents, John and Lorna Kuiack for their love, and unending support. Finally I would like to thank Giuliana Velarde for helping me stay motivated and on track, and for her many hours spent editing my work.

show abstract

Survey on Guidance Navigation and Control Requirements for Spacecraft Formation-Flying Missions

Cited by 128 publications

References 36 publications

Formation Design of Distributed Telescopes in Earth Orbit for Astrophysics Applications

Formation Design of Distributed Telescopes in Earth Orbit for Astrophysics Applications

Minimum-Fuel Control Strategy for Spacecraft Formation Reconfiguration via Finite-Time Maneuvers

Spacecraft Formation Guidance and Control on J2-Perturbed Eccentric Orbits

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About