A practical algorithm is developed for on-board plan ning ofn-impulse fuel-optimal maneuvers for establishment and reconfiguration of spacecraft formations. The method is valid in circular and elliptic orbits and includes first-order secular h effects. The dynamics are expressed in terms of differential mean orbital elements, and relations are provided to allow the formation designer to transform these into intuitive geometric quantities for visualization and analysis. The maneuver target ing problem is formulated as an optimal control problem in both continuous and discrete time. The continuous-time formulation cannot be solved directly in an efficient manner, and the discrete time formulation, which has an analytical solution, does not directly yield the optimal thrust times. Therefore, a practi cal algorithm is designed by iteratively solving the discrete time formulation while using the continuous-time necessary conditions to refine the thrust times until they converge to the optimal values.Simulation results are shown for a variety of reconfiguration maneuvers and reference orbits, including simulations with and without navigation errors for the NASA CubeSat Proximity Operations Demonstration mission.
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