Ballistic and navigation issues for satellite formation flying design

This paper presents ballistic and navigation issues for satellite formation flying design and control. Methods of the spacecraft configuration formation are presented. One of them is the fuel wasteful method for a periodic impulse correction of each formation flying satellite position. This method allows formation of a relatively longtime array configuration. Another energy efficient method (twice a loop) provides configuration formation of satellites on the nocoplanar orbits. There are other methods of configuration formation presented in this paper. Their advantages and disadvantages are analyzed. The paper describes onboard equipment modifications of the flight control system during the spacecraft formation flying, both with using the satellite navigation system equipment and without it. Some control structures of the spacecraft formation flying are proposed. Satellites with equal possibilities form the single-level control structure. The multilevel control structure includes a leader and slave satellites. The leader is authorized either to control slave satellites or to broadcast personal trajectory data, ofeach slave, or to broadcast personal trajectory data of the leader satellite.

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