Fuel optimized rotation for satellite formations in free space

• Published in: Proceedings of the 1999 American Control Conference (Cat. No. 99CH36251) Vol. 5; pp. 2975 - 2979 vol.5
• Main Authors: Beard, R.W., Hadaegh, F.Y.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 1999
• Subjects: Cost function; Fuels; Information theory; Interferometry; Laboratories; Propulsion; Satellites; Shape; Space technology; Space vehicles
• ISBN: 9780780349902; 0780349903
• ISSN: 0743-1619; 2378-5861
• DOI: 10.1109/ACC.1999.782306

This paper considers the problem of rotating a formation of satellites from one orientation to another, using an optimal amount of fuel. The formation is constrained to have the same shape at the beginning and end of a manoeuvre. However, the shape is unconstrained throughout the manoeuvre. This implies that to optimize fuel, each spacecraft travels in a straight line, from its beginning to end position. A cost function, motivated by the entropy function from information theory, is used to trade off fuel minimization verses equalization of the fuel across the constellation to avoid fuel starvation.