Formation control of satellites in low Earth orbit by using moving masses

Abstract

This paper investigates a formation control technique for low-Earth orbit satellites using moving masses. The moving mass control mechanism is conducted to reveal the controllability between the attitude and the offsets of moving masses, which shows that the moving masses only provide limited attitude control. Thus, the magnetic actuators are considered to offer an additional control degree of freedom. Then, to achieve the desired formation control, the aerodynamic force generated by changing attitudes is used orbital maneuvering. Considering the perturbations in the orbit dynamics at low-Earth orbit, a formation control law based on Nash game is developed against the disturbance described as a player. Furthermore, to deal with the offset saturation of moving masses, an adaptive controller is investigated. A simulation of two satellites formation is performed to validate the feasibility of the proposed formation control method.