14/ago/20 – Relative Astrodynamics of Spacecraft Formation Flying (Dr. Willer Gomes, ITA)

The formation flying technology involving small satellites has allowed the development of space missions that were not possible to be carried out previously with just one large monolithic satellite. Its main advantages include: increased reliability and redundancy of the entire space system, reduced launch and maintenance costs, significant increase in the area of coverage, and greater flexibility in the design of the mission. Formation flying deals with relative astrodynamics since it is necessary to track and keep a desired relative separation, orientation or position between spacecraft The trajectory optimization and control problem, decomposed in two tasks (formation keeping and formation maneuver), has been widely studied in this decade. The advantages from using satellite formations come at a cost of increased complexity and challenges such as: high-precision relative navigation, distributed communication, stable formation design, among others. In this sense, this seminar aims to present: the fundamentals and references of the relative astrodynamics necessary for a spacecraft formation flying; the main potential applications; a brief review of formation flying mission; the recent works carried out by the E2MoC team, an ITA’s research group, in this field; and an overview about the ITASAT-2 project which is a candidate to be the first Brazilian formation flying mission proposed by the ITA Space Center.