Dynamical decomposition modeling and control of multi-spacecraft coordinated flying

This paper presents a dynamics modeling and control scheme for multi-spacecraft coordinated flying based on dynamical decomposition. With certain decomposition arithmetics, physically separated spacecrafts can be connected together, and multi-spacecraft coordinated flying involved in complicated motions can be decomposed into two parts, one is the group motion of multi-spacecraft flying and the other is the relative motion of spacecrafts formation flying. The dynamics models of these two subsystems possess the similar form with that of a single spacecraft, and the formation maintenance, reconfiguration and formation transfer within a large scope can be realized by controlling one of the subsystems. Tracking control laws for group system and formation system are also designed, and their stability is proved by Lyapunov theorem. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the decomposition arithmetics and the control scheme.