Coordinated Motion Planning for On-Orbit Satellite Inspection using a Swarm of Small-Spacecraft

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of how to plan optimal motion for a swarm of on-orbit servicing (OOS) small-spacecraft remotely inspecting a non-cooperative client spacecraft in Earth orbit. With the goal being to maximize the information gathered from the coordinated inspection, we present an integrated motion planning methodology that is a) fuel-efficient to ensure extended operation time and b) computationally-tractable to make possible on-board re-planning for improved exploration. Our method is decoupled into first offline selection of optimal orbits, followed by online coordinated attitude planning. In the orbit selection stage, we numerically evaluate the upper and lower bounds of the information gain for a discretized set of passive relative orbits (PRO). The algorithm then sequentially assigns orbits to each spacecraft using greedy heuristics. For the attitude planning stage, we propose a dynamic programming (DP) based attitude planner capable of addressing vehicle and sensor constraints such as attitude control system specifications, sensor field of view, sensing duration, and sensing angle. Finally, we validate the performance of the proposed algorithms through simulation of a design reference mission involving 3U CubeSats inspecting a satellite in low Earth orbit.