Autonomous Formation Flying for the PRISMA Mission

PRISMA is a technology demonstration mission for satellite formation flying and in-orbit servicing. The space segment comprises the fully maneuverable Main minisatellite and the smaller Target satellite in a low Earth orbit at 700-km altitude. A key mission objective is to demonstrate onboard, fully autonomous, robust, safe, and precise formation flying of spacecraft. This is accomplished by spaceborne global positioning system navigation, guidance, and control functionalities for the maintenance of the relative motion between the two spacecraft. An innovative estimation approach employs a common Kalman filter for the absolute states of Main and Target, which accounts for the interdependency of absolute and relative navigation without the need for an explicit relative state. As a result, the onboard navigation system provides absolute and relative orbit information in real time with a position accuracy of 2 and 0.1 m, respectively. The formation control achieves accuracies of a few tenths of meters with minimum usage of thrusters. The guidance and control concept is detailed with emphasis on a relative eccentricity and inclination vector separation strategy. The paper derives estimates of the expected relative orbit control performances based upon realworld simulations using typical global positioning system receiver and propulsion system characteristics