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arXiv · 1806.01218

Differential Drag Control Scheme for Large Constellation of Planet Satellites and On-Orbit Results

Cyrus Foster·James Mason·Vivek Vittaldev·Lawrence Leung·Vincent Beukelaers·Leon Stepan·Rob Zimmerman
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Abstract

A methodology is presented for the differential drag control of a large fleet of propulsion-less satellites deployed in the same orbit. The controller places satellites into a constellation with specified angular offsets and zero-relative speed. Time optimal phasing is achieved by first determining an appropriate relative placement, i.e. the order of the satellites. A second optimization problem is then solved as a large coupled system to find the drag command profile required for each satellite. The control authority is the available ratio of low-drag to high-drag ballistic coefficients of the satellites when operating in their background mode. The controller is able to successfully phase constellations with up to 100 satellites in simulations. On-orbit performance of the controller is demonstrated by phasing the Planet Flock 2p constellation of twelve cubesats launched in June 2016 into a 510 km sun-synchronous orbit.

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Cyrus Foster, James Mason, Vivek Vittaldev, Lawrence Leung, Vincent Beukelaers, Leon Stepan, Rob Zimmerman. 2018-06-04. Differential Drag Control Scheme for Large Constellation of Planet Satellites and On-Orbit Results. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01218

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