Abstract

Satellite swarms are groups of spacecraft that operate cooperatively to perform a common task or goal in orbit. Examples of this are in-space assembly or manufacturing of structures, cooperative sensing platforms, on-orbit servicing, asteroid mining, etc. Swarms would be operating in relative-motion orbits, working around a common point in space, within a few kilometers of each other. Such swarms would share information between each member of the swarm, allowing them to have a shared situational awareness of the entire mission. This paper describes a novel approach to optimize relative-motion orbital trajectories for a spacecraft swarm of arbitrary size and function, using genetic algorithms. The use of genetic algorithms allows convergence to an optimal set or family of trajectories for each member of the swarm regardless of the size of the swarm or mission functions required, should a solution exist. These …

Date

2020

Authors

Rahul Rughani, David Barnhart

Book

AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum

Pages

1916