Discrete time multiple spacecraft formation flying attitude optimal control in presence of relative state constraints

This paper addresses the challenge of synchronized multiple spacecraft attitude reorien-tation in presence of pointing and boundary constraints with limited inter-spacecraft communica-tion link. Relative attitude pointing constraint among the fleet of spacecraft has also been modeled and considered during the attitude maneuvers toward the desired states. Formation fling control structure that consists of decentralized path planners based on virtual structure approach joint with discrete time optimal local controller is designed to achieve the mission's goals. Due to digital com-puting of spacecraft's onboard computer, local optimal controller based on discrete time prediction and correction algorithm has been utilized. The time step of local optimal algorithm execution is designed so that the spacecraft track their desired attitudes with appropriate error bound. The con-vergence of the proposed architecture and stability of local controller's tracking error within appro-priate upper bound are proved. Finally, a numerical simulation of a stereo imaging scenario is presented to verify the performance of the proposed architecture and the effectiveness of the algo-rithm. (c) 2020 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).