Emulating SmallSat Missions With UAVs: Remote Sensing and Formation Flying Testbeds

With the increasing deployment of small satellite formations for Earth observation and scientific missions, there is a growing need for flexible and low-risk testing platforms to validate remote sensing applications and autonomous formation flying. This research explores the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as terrestrial surrogates for small satellite formations, allowing the development and testing of algorithms, sensing payloads, and coordination strategies in a representative and controlled environment. We discuss recent efforts that use UAVs, such as Crazyflie, to emulate spacecraft dynamics. We highlight the effectiveness of this approach towards the development of advanced formation flying, planning, and control techniques. This research will also introduce the project GLITTER (Gnss-r sateLlITe earth obsERvation), which investigates the use of GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R), an approach that relies on reflected signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems for Earth observation. GLITTER aims to improve GNSS-R technology by building a synchronized constellation of CubeSats. The project relies on UAV-based testbeds as critical components for validating formation control strategies and antenna beamforming techniques. This research will briefly outline these benefits and key simulation insights, emphasizing how UAVs can accelerate innovation in small satellite mission design. This work demonstrates that the same guidance, autonomy, and sensing algorithms developed for satellites can be evaluated safely, repeatedly, and cost-effectively on Earth by transferring scaled formation geometries generated in Simulink to a UAV testing simulation and validating them through simulation UAV flight tests.