Concept for the Control of Relative Orbital Elements for Non-Impulsive Thrust Maneuver

This paper derives a control concept for far range Formation Flight (FF) applications assuming circular reference orbits. The paper focuses on a general impulsive control concept for FF which is then extended to the more realistic case of non-impulsive thrust maneuvers. The control concept uses a description of the formation in relative orbital elements instead of the classical Cartesian description since the relative orbital elements provide a direct access to key aspects of the relative motion and is particularly suitable for relative orbit control purposes and collision avoidance analyses. The resulting control scheme is simple and effective and thus also suitable for on-board implementation. In the last part of the paper, the derived control concept is applied to a reference low earth orbit formation based on the German DEOS mission. Simulation results show that proposed concept improves the timing of the thrust maneuver executions and thus reduces the residual error of the formation control.