Station Keeping of Constellations Using Multiobjective Strategies

• Main Authors: Evandro Marconi Rocco, Marcelo Lopes de Oliveira e Souza, Antonio Fernando Bertachini de Almeida Prado
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2013-01-01
• Series: Mathematical Problems in Engineering
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/476451

The goal of the present paper is to study the problem of station keeping maneuvers of satellites that belong to a constellation. The objective is to perform those maneuvers with low fuel consumption and but also including a time constraint. This type of problem has several aspects to be considered, like fuel consumption, duration of the maneuvers. These aspects are applied to all the satellites of the constellation, so a strategy has to be found to consider the global optimization of those variables that can control the geometry of the constellation. So, this is a multiobjective problem. To find a solution, strategies are formulated that minimize the fuel consumption considering all the satellites and also considering the duration of the maneuver. Numerical examples are shown.