Abstract Fly-around technology, as applied to maintain a chasing spacecraft flying periodically around the chief spacecraft, has received widespread attention in recent years. The conventional impulsive or continuous-thrust control approaches for maintaining non-natural formations put a high demand on the engine and limit the applicability of engineering. In this study, which is based on the relative orbital elements, we propose a series of analytic natural fly-around formations for the two-body case, which can revisit specific points or be maintained within a certain range. In addition to maintaining the fly-around formation when considering the J2 perturbation, we present a two-stage constant thrust control method solved with the linearized sensitive matrix. Furthermore, based on this method, we present several maintaining strategies that guarantee a periodic revisit to a specified relative position. We conduct numerical simulations to demonstrate the efficacy of these proposed methods.
Highlights A series of analytic natural fly-around formations are proposed. The reference orbit is elliptical orbit, which can also be applied to circular orbit. A two-stage constant thrust control method solved through the linearized sensitive matrix is presented. Several maintaining strategies are presented to guarantees periodic revisit specified relative position.
New fly-around formations for an elliptical reference orbit
Acta Astronautica ; 171 ; 335-351
2020-03-08
17 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Study on Relative Orbit Geometry of Spacecraft Formations in Elliptical Reference Orbits
Online Contents | 2008
|Self-learning for translational control of elliptical orbit spacecraft formations
Emerald Group Publishing | 2024
|RELATIVE LAMBERT TRANFER FOR ELLIPTICAL REFERENCE ORBIT BASED ON RELATIVE ORBIT ELEMENTS
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2016
|