Abstract
Future scientific missions, such as virtual telescopes or interferometers, will require precise formation flying, such that the relative positions of spacecraft are controlled very precisely. The present paper discusses how to suppress relative position variation during a single orbit for along-track formation flying. We first introduce the control function distribution among the two spacecraft. We then focus on the translational control, design three different controllers and perform numerical studies to compare them in regard to the smallest possible variation (i.e. the achievable control accuracy) and the total delta-V. It has been shown that different controllers perform better in suppressing the effects of air drag (constant acceleration) or the J2 term (mixture of several sinusoidal waves).
