arXiv (Cornell University)
Autonomous Scheduling of Agile Spacecraft Constellations with Delay Tolerant Networking for Reactive Imaging
October 2020 • Sreeja Nag, Alan S. Li, Vinay Ravindra, Marc Sánchez Net, Kar‐Ming Cheung, Rod Lammers, Brian P. Bledsoe
Small spacecraft now have precise attitude control systems available commercially, allowing them to slew in 3 degrees of freedom, and capture images within short notice. When combined with appropriate software, this agility can significantly increase response rate, revisit time and coverage. In prior work, we have demonstrated an algorithmic framework that combines orbital mechanics, attitude control and scheduling optimization to plan the time-varying, full-body orientation of agile, small spacecraft in a constel…