Simulation of spacecraft formation maneuvers by means of floating platforms

This article provides a proposal case for studying simulations of spacecraft formation maneuvers in a Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation Testbed specifically devoted to nanosatellites. The design specifications of the setup to perform such simulations are given, as well as the methods and results of the preliminary characterization of the floating platform to be used. The intent is to create a corpus of tests to find the dynamic behavior in a frictionless simulation as part of a concurrent decentralized simulation between the NanoSat Lab in Luleå University of Technology and the Guidance and Navigation Lab at La Sapienza.