Review of Formation Flying and Constellation Missions Using Nanosatellites
Abstract
Small satellites are enabling multisatellite missions that were not otherwise possible because of their small size and modular nature [1]. Multiple small satellites can be flown instead of a much bigger and costlier conventional satellite for distributed sensing applications such as atmospheric sampling, distributed antennas [2], and synthetic apertures [3,4]. Missions with multiple small satellites can deliver a comparable or greater mission capability than a monolithic satellite, but with significantly enhanced flexibility (adaptability, scalability, evolvability, and maintainability) and robustness (reliability, survivability, and fault tolerance) [1,5]. Small satellites that weigh less than 10 kg can be broadly classified into nanosatellites (mass between 1 and 10 kg), picosatellites (mass between 0.1 and 1 kg), and femtosatellites (mass less than 100 g) [1,6].
Additional Information
© 2015 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. Received 5 March 2015; revision received 16 July 2015; accepted for publication 7 September 2015; published online 24 March 2016. E. G. Lightsey Associate Editor. This work was supported by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Government sponsorship is acknowledged. This research was carried out in part at the JPL, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. The authors would like to thank Tom Cwik at JPL for his guidance and constructive comments. The authors would also like to thank D. Morgan, D. Chen, S. Chan, Y. Taleb, D. Rogers, J. Kokkat, D. Hanley, J. Puig, and H.-B. Yoon for their valuable input.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 71820
- DOI
- 10.2514/1.A33291
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161108-143406692
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2016-11-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- GALCIT