The emergence of small satellites and CubeSats for interplanetary explorationwill mean hundreds if not thousands of spacecraft exploring every corner of thesolar-system. Current methods for communication and tracking of deep spaceprobes use ground based systems such as the Deep Space Network (DSN). However,the increased communication demand will require radically new methods to easecommunication congestion. Networks of communication relay satellites located atstrategic locations such as geostationary orbit and Lagrange points arepotential solutions. Instead of one large communication relay satellite, wecould have scores of small satellites that utilize phase arrays to effectivelyoperate as one large satellite. Excess payload capacity on rockets can be usedto warehouse more small satellites in the communication network. The advantageof this network is that even if one or a few of the satellites are damaged ordestroyed, the network still operates but with degraded performance. Thesatellite network would operate in a distributed architecture and somesatellites maybe dynamically repurposed to split and communicate with multipletargets at once. The potential for this alternate communication architecture issignificant, but this requires development of satellite formation flying andnetworking technologies. Our research has found neural-network controlapproaches such as the Artificial Neural Tissue can be effectively used tocontrol multirobot/multi-spacecraft systems and can produce human competitivecontrollers. We have been developing a laboratory experiment platform calledAthena to develop critical spacecraft control algorithms and cognitivecommunication methods. We briefly report on the development of the platform andour plans to gain insight into communication phase arrays for space.
展开▼
