Research Summaries

Back Aggregation / Disaggregation of Spacecraft Systems and Convex Optimization of Satellite Swarm Trajectories

Fiscal Year 2017
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Investigator(s) Pandya, Neehar
Sponsor Space & Naval Warfare Systems Center-Pacific (Navy)
Summary The purpose of this thesis is to develop control architecture for disaggregating and aggregating spacecraft systems. The motivation behind this project comes from the need to have highly flexible and survivable systems in orbit that can provide multiple mission capabilities. In today's environment of increasingly capable anti-satellite systems, an on orbit system with the ability to break up into multiple pieces upon threat detection then come back together the continue the mission would be enormously resilient.
The proposed effort may enable the following: spacecraft inspection, reconfiguration, disaggregation/aggregation, and on-orbit assembly of space structures. The proposed research can also lead to space systems with an increased autonomy, adaptability to changing environments or tasks, post-launch flexibility, and decreased observability and vulnerability.
Keywords Aggregation Disaggregation Optimization Spacecraft swarms
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal