Exploration of small Solar System bodies has traditionally been performed by monolithic spacecraft carrying several science instruments. However, instruments often cannot be operated simultaneously due to requirements including viewing angle, illumination, power, and data constraints. This has motivated interest in architectures in which a swarm of small spacecraft, each carrying one instrument, studies a small body after being deployed by a carrier spacecraft; such architectures hold promise to yield significant improvements in mission efficiency, increased data quality, and reduced mission duration. A key difficulty is the selection of orbits for the spacecraft, which must satisfy not only instrument requirements but also communication and data storage constraints. To address this, we propose a novel gradient-based optimization algorithm that simultaneously optimizes spacecraft orbits, observations, and communications; the approach captures instrument requirements, communication bandwidth, and memory usage, and it accommodates irregular gravity field models and surface geometries. Numerical simulations of a six-spacecraft swarm studying the 433 Eros asteroid show that the approach results in a 67.9% increase in data returned as compared to a communication-agnostic approach. Collectively, these results enable system designers to quickly assess the end-to-end performance of multispacecraft constellations, and represent a first step toward communication-aware design of multispacecraft missions for small Solar System body exploration.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Communication-Aware Orbit Design for Small Spacecraft Swarms Around Small Bodies



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2022-11-01




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Communication-Aware Orbit Design for Small Spacecraft Swarms Around Small Bodies (AAS 20-603)

    Rossi, Federico / Bandyopadhyay, Saptarshi / Mote, Mark et al. | TIBKAT | 2021


    Autonomous Angles-Only Navigation for Spacecraft Swarms around Planetary Bodies

    Kruger, Justin / Wallace, Kathryn / Koenig, Adam W. et al. | IEEE | 2021



    On Orbit Object Transportation With Spacecraft Swarms

    Sikka, Sidhdharth D. / Lu, Zehui / Rai, Ayush et al. | AIAA | 2025


    Autonomous Coordination Algorithms for Swarms of Small Spacecraft Performing a Radar Mission Around a Small Body

    Stuart, Jeff / Haynes, Mark / Bandyopadhyay, Saptarshi et al. | NTRS | 2020