A decentralised approach for formation flying reconfiguration and maintenance using GNSS-based navigation

This paper presents the simulation results for the reconfiguration and maintenance of a novel three-satellites formation flying mission study. The analyses are based on a decentralized approach for the guidance, navigation, and control, to provide autonomous management of the formation flying by each satellite. The mission concept under analysis is developed in the remote-sensing field, to improve the performances of the Earth’s observation missions for land and oceans applications and it is proposed as the new generation of ESA’s SMOS mission. An in-house simulation suite, based on GNSS navigation, is used to assess the performances of the navigation and the control during nominal and nonnominal phases of the mission. The high-fidelity simulation analyses aim at assessing realistic performances of the proposed guidance and control strategies, based on low-thrust engine actuators. The work opens to the design of future formation flying missions in the Earth observation field, providing a baseline for the guidance, navigation, and control simulator.