FEFF methodology for spacecraft formations reconfiguration in the vicinity of libration points

Abstract

Formation flight of spacecraft clusters needs of reliable and accurate techniques to design the proximity maneuvers required in situations like the deployment or the reconfiguration of the formation. This work is a contribution to this set of techniques considering a finite element approach. The FEFF (finite elements for formation flight) formulation provides a systematic way to compute such maneuvers and, at the same time, incorporates optimal control techniques which can include collision avoidance or many other types of constraints. In this paper we perform basic FEFF computations in a libration point regime of the Sun–Earth system using the linearized equations about a nonlinear nominal base orbit. The nominal trajectories obtained for this model are then corrected considering a full nonlinear model (JPL-ephemeris). Also random errors have been added to the nominal reconfiguration maneuvers in order to simulate small thrust deviations. The extended FEFF methodology proves to be robust both in the computation of the nominal reconfiguration maneuvers and in the correction of the perturbations.