Charging strategies for electrostatic control of spacecraft formations

Formation control by means of electrostatic forces, generating attractive or repulsive actions by charging the satellites’ surfaces, has been recently proposed for high altitude orbits to precisely maintain the configuration without risk of plume impingement. This paper focuses on electrostatic control and switching strategies for charge distribution in spacecraft formations, taking into account the limits on the power requirements. Two nonlinear global control approaches are presented and applied to two and three satellites’ formations. Then, an optimized charge distribution process among the satellites is discussed and applied to the three spacecraft formation case. Numerical simulations are performed in order to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of this configuration control technique.