Future astronomical, surveillance and communications concepts are expected todepend heavily upon distributed systems – many satellites flying in formation toform synthesized detector arrays many times the size of each individualspacecraft. Various concepts for these systems are already under development atestablishments around the globe. The MUSTANG project is a UK programme funded bythe British National Space Centre (BNSC) to demonstrate distributed systemsusing two nanospacecraft in a low Earth orbit. This will include thedemonstration of a variety of formation flying techniques as well asdemonstrating various enabling technologies that will facilitate suchdistributed systems. The use of many small spacecraft in distributed systemsgreatly increases the potential for the production of large amounts of spacedebris. Passive end-of-life de-orbit technologies will also be demonstrated toaddress this proble
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