A COORDINATED STATIONKEEPING STRATEGY FOR COLLOCATED GEOSYNCHRONOUS SATELLITES

摘要

This paper summarizes the design and development of an effective coordinated stationkeeping strategy for multiple geosynchronous spacecraft occupying the same longitude with different control boxes and mission objectives. The study focuses on examining the relative motion between two to three uncoordinated geosynchronous spacecraft and developing an effective maneuver procedure to maximize closest approach distances with minimized mission impacts. It is assumed that those uncoordinated geosynchronous missions control their spacecraft with conventional north/south and east/west stationkeeping methods. The satellites are not constrained to have the same tolerance limits. Their stationkeeping methods may or may not adopt the sun-pointing strategy and the area-to-mass ratios can be very different due to spacecraft designs and mission objectives. The concept of isolating radial and cross-track separations at longitude crossing can avoid the prediction of intrack separation, which is always difficult to estimate with good accuracy after several days. A simplified analytic representation is derived which helps in understanding the relative motion between spacecraft. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.