Fuel optimized rotation for satellite formations in free space

This paper considers the problem of rotating a formation of satellites from one orientation to another, using an optimal amount of fuel. The formation is constrained to have the same shape at the beginning and end of a manoeuvre. However, the shape is unconstrained throughout the manoeuvre. This implies that to optimize fuel, each spacecraft travels in a straight line, from its beginning to end position. A cost function, motivated by the entropy function from information theory, is used to trade off fuel minimization verses equalization of the fuel across the constellation to avoid fuel starvation.

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