Enabling Spacecraft Formation Flying through Spaceborne GPSand Enhanced Autonomy Technologies

Frank H. Bauer, Kate Hartman, Jonathan P. How

Abstract:	Formation Flying is quickly revolutionizing the way the space community conducts autonomous science missions around the Earth and in space. This technological revolution will provide new, innovative ways for this community to gather scientific information, share this information between space vehicles and the ground, and expedite the Human exploration of space. Once fully matured, this technology will result in swarms of space vehicles flying as a virtual platform and gathering significantly more and better science data than is possible today. Formation flying will be enabled through the development and deployment of spaceborne differential Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and through innovative spacecraft autonomy techniques. This paper provides an overview of the current status of NASA/DoD/Industry/University partnership to bring Formation Flying technology to the forefront as quickly as possible, the hurdles that need to be overcome to achieve the formation flying vision, and the team's approach to transfer this technology to space. It will also describe some of the formation flying testbeds, such as Orion, that are being developed to demonstrate and validate these innovative GPS sensing and formation control technologies.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1999) September 14 - 17, 1999 Nashville, TN
Pages:	369 - 384
Cite this article:	Bauer, Frank H., Hartman, Kate, How, Jonathan P., "Enabling Spacecraft Formation Flying through Spaceborne GPSand Enhanced Autonomy Technologies," Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1999), Nashville, TN, September 1999, pp. 369-384.
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