Reconfigurable Guidance Strategy for Compensating Actuator Faults in Spacecraft Formation Flying

The capacity to keep a desired topology with a requested accuracy plays a significant role in every spacecraft formation-flying operation. These missions can be terminated in case of an unexpected spacecraft fault, preventing the system from returning to its nominal configuration. This paper presents and tests a new recovery solution, called Reconfigurable Guidance Strategy (RGS), for the spacecraft formation-flying control problem subject to a look-in-place permanent thruster fault. The proposed method relies on autonomously and in real-time reconfiguring the guidance function to compensate for the loss of the spacecraft actuation system. The performance and cost of the RGS have been tested in a high-fidelity simulation scenario, the 42 spacecraft simulator developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, taking into account orbital and rotational nonlinear coupled dynamics, high-order perturbation models, and actuator and sensor models. The numerical simulation results have demonstrated the proposed recovery strategy’s effectiveness, feasibility, and robustness.