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.


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    Title :

    New fly-around formations for an elliptical reference orbit


    Contributors:
    Bai, Shengzhou (author) / Han, Chao (author) / Rao, Yinrui (author) / Sun, Xiucong (author) / Sun, Yu (author)

    Published in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 171 ; 335-351


    Publication date :

    2020-03-08


    Size :

    17 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English





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