Formation control of spacecraft flying with network-induced delays and packet dropouts

This paper investigates the formation keeping problem for multiple spacecraft flying in the presence of time-varying delays and packet dropouts in the intercommunication. A sampled-data approach for tracking control of relative orbital motion between two spacecraft in a leader-follower formation is presented for the case when the leader spacecraft is in a circular orbit. Lyapunov stability conditions are derived to guarantee exponential stability of position and velocity tracking errors and ensure desired performance (projected circular formation). Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and the robustness of the developed controllers.