Autonomous attitude determination, guidance and control of mini-satellites in low-orbit Earth survey constellations

Abstract

The problems of autonomous attitude determination, guidance and control in the constellations of mini-observation satellites are considered. The synthesis of the guidance laws is based on explicit relations that link the image motion in the telescope focal plane with the satellite spatial motion relative to the Earth's surface. The developed methods and algorithms for scanning areal survey performed by mini-satellite constellations in sun-synchronous orbits as well as results of computer simulation are presented, that demonstrate their effectiveness.