From GRACE to AVANTI: 15 Years of formation-flying experience at DLR

In the last decade, the German Space Operations Center (DLR/GSOC) has been building up a unique expertise in the field of spacecraft formation flying. A total of four formations have been successfully operated from the GSOC premises, providing valuable flight data and experience. Several relevant technical contributions have also been made in the design and implementation of these formations and of their related subsystems, yielding to a collection of powerful tools and methods to operate, monitor, determine the state and control a formation. The paper summarizes the main achievements, describes the relevant contributions to the state of the art and provides some insight into the future operational and research-related formation-flying activities.