A Future Concept of Coordinated Orbit Control of Colocated Geostationary Satellites.

Abstract

Present-day ground-based stationkeeping of colocated geostationary satellites restricts the number of satellites which can be safely maintained within a common control box of typically +/- 0.1 grad in latitude and longitude. In order to avoid drawbacks such as close approaches, mutual interferences and large-scale ground control effort a new concept of coordinated orbit control is presented. The features are concentration of control activities on one ground control station and nominally on one of the colocated satellites. The latter performs relative orbit control with respect to the other satellites employing inter-satellite laser tracking, onboard relative orbit determination and onboard relative correction maneuver calculation. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed concept, simulation results for a seven satellite cluster are presented.