Orbit control using electric propulsion systems for earth observation satellite swarm

الملخص EN

The new trend in a remote sensing application is to replace the traditional single satellite with a set of low-cost, simple and short development time satellites.

Satellite swarm consists of twelve CubeSats work as imaging nodes accompanied by a data-relay-satellite was proposed to fulfill Earth observation mission.

In order to achieve the required mission performance, it is necessary to maintain the virtual structure of the satellite swarm over the mission lifetime.

The external disturbances (e.

g.

Earth oblateness, atmospheric drag, and solar radiation pressure, etc.

) cause a drift to the orbits of satellite warm; therefore, this disturbance can change the virtual topology of the satellite swarm.

In order to keep the virtual topology of the satellite swarm, and to fulfill the mission requirements, it is required to maintain the orbits of all satellite swarm members all over its lifetime.

Many researchers studied autonomous orbit control algorithms, such as PD, LQR, and sliding mode.

In order to select the best algorithm for satellite swarm mission, this paper makes a comparison between the commonly used orbit control algorithms based on Matlab simulation, the required control thrust is generated using electric propulsion system, The parameters of control performance such as; the settling time, the steady-state error, the required control effort, and the execution time are used as compression factors to select the suitable orbital control algorithm for the proposed satellite swarm.