Minimization and equalization of energy for formation flying reconfiguration

An efficient method for the generation of collision free, energy optimal, reconfiguration trajectories with energy equalization constraints of formation flying is presented. The main idea is to introduce a set of way-points through which the spacecraft are required to pass combined with certain parameterizations of the trajectories. The resulting energy optimal with equalization and collision avoidance constraints problem is formulated as a parameter optimization problem in terms of the way-points parameters. A numerical algorithm is proposed and used for reconfiguration scenarios involving multiple spacecraft.