The formation flying of precisely controlled spacecraft in deep space can be used to implement optical instruments capable of imaging planets in other solar systems. The distance of the formation from Earth necessitates a significant level of autonomy and each spacecraft must base its actions on its estimates of the location and velocity of the other spacecraft. Precise coordination and control is the key requirement in such missions and the flow of information between spacecraft must be carefully designed. Doing this in an efficient and optimal manner requires novel techniques for the design of the on-board estimators. The use of standard Kalman filter-based designs can lead to unanticipated dynamics - which we refer to as disagreement dynamics - in the estimators' errors. We show how communication amongst the spacecraft can be designed in order to control all of the dynamics within the formation. We present several results relating the topology of the communication network to the resulting closed-loop control dynamics of the formation. The consequences for the design of the control, communication and coordination are discussed.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Parallel estimation and control architectures for deep-space formation flying spacecraft


    Contributors:
    Smith, R.S. (author) / Hadaegh, F.Y. (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2006-01-01


    Size :

    229726 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Deep-Space Spacecraft Formation Flying Using Theta-D Control

    Xin, Ming / Balakrishnan, S.N. / Pernicka, H. | AIAA | 2004




    AIAA-2004-4784 Deep-Space Spacecraft Formation Flying Using Theta-D Control

    Balakrishnan, S. / Pernicka, H. / Xin, M. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2004