In-plane formation reconfiguration with radial maneuvers

Abstract

Formation reconfiguration with impulsive maneuvers has been continuously addressed in recent decades. The studies mostly focused on in-plane formation reconfiguration since the out-of-plane motion is independently controlled by a single burn. Most in-plane reconfiguration studies, meanwhile, rely on tangential maneuvers because of fuel efficiency and controllability of the orbital energy, compared to radial maneuvers. In this paper, the perspective differs that little influence of the radial maneuvers on the orbital energy is considered as a benefit rather than a drawback. By employing radial burns only, an effect of the thrust errors on the semimajor axis control error can be minimized. Both numerical simulations and sensitivity analysis demonstrate the robustness of the proposed radial impulsive burns compared to the conventional tangential impulsive control schemes.