A closed-loop system for the demonstration of autonomous satellite formation flying technologies using hardware-in-the-loop has been developed. Making use of a GPS signal simulator with a dual radio frequency outlet, the system includes two GPS space receivers as well as a powerful onboard navigation processor dedicated to the GPS-based guidance, navigation, and control of a satellite formation in real-time. The closed-loop system allows realistic simulations of autonomous formation flying scenarios, enabling research in the fields of tracking and orbit control strategies for a wide range of applications. The autonomous closed-loop formation acquisition and keeping strategy is based on Lyapunov's direct control method as applied to the standard set of Keplerian elements. This approach not only assures global and asymptotic stability of the control but also maintains valuable physical insight into the applied control vectors. Furthermore, the approach can account for system uncertainties and effectively avoids a corn putationally expensive solution of the two point boundary problem, which renders the concept particularly attractive for implementation in onboard processors. A guidance law has been developed which strictly separates the relative from the absolute motion, thus avoiding the numerical integration of a target trajectory in the onboard processor.


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    Title :

    First Results from a Hardware-in-the-Loop Demonstration of Closed-Loop Autonomous Formation Flying


    Contributors:
    E. Gill (author) / B. Naasz (author) / T. Ebinuma (author)

    Publication date :

    2002


    Size :

    22 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English