The PY4 Mission: A Low-Cost Demonstration of CubeSat Formation-Flying Technologies

The PY4 mission aims to enable autonomous swarms of small spacecraft by both reducing the manufacturing cost and integration effort required for individual spacecraft, and by advancing guidance, navigation, and control algorithms that increase autonomy and reduce or eliminate the need for expensive sensor, actuator, and propulsion hardware. PY4 consists of four 1.5U CubeSats, and builds on the PyCubed open-source avionics platform and the previous V-R3x mission. To date, PY4 has successfully demonstrated high-data-rate mesh networking, precise inter-satellite ranging, range-based relative orbit determination, and magnetorquer-only sun pointing. A drag-based formation-flying experiment is also planned for an extended mission.