Electromagnetic Formation Flying with Eccentric Reference Orbits

Over the last decade, a considerable amount of research work has been done in the area of spacecraft formation flight, with particular emphasis on control techniques using thruster-based systems. Nevertheless, thrusters require propellant to work and this limit the lifetime of the mission. Electromagnetic Formation Flight (EMFF) is presented in this paper as a fuel-less strategy to control spacecraft formations by means of electromagnets. In EMFF, spacecraft can be equipped with one or more coils and reactions wheels which could be arranged in several combinations according to mission requirements. An electric current flows through the coils in order to produce a magnetic dipole in a specific direction. The magnetic field of a spacecraft reacts against the magnetic dipoles of the others, generating forces and torques which in turn could be used as control inputs. The main objective of this paper is to provide a formulation for EMFF when a formation is moving in eccentric reference orbits and for this purpose, the Tschauner and Hempel model will be used. Results are presented after analysing different formation scenarios providing the necessary magnetic requirements for station keeping and resolving which cases are suitable to be controlled by this technology. High-Temperature Semiconductor (HTS) plays an important role in EMFF and for that reason the paper also investigates the correlation of the magnetic force and the coil mass, which in turn affects the total mass of the spacecraft.