Formation flying orbit design for the distributed synthetic aperture radar satellite

Formation flying orbit design is one of the key technologies for system design and performance analysis of the distributed SAR satellites. The approximately analytic solution of the passive stable formation flying orbit elements is explored based on the expansion form of Kepler's equation. A new method of orbital parameters design for three-dimensional formation flying SAR satellites is presented, and the precision of the orbital elements is analyzed. Formation flying orbit elements are calculated for the L-Band distributed SAR satellites using the formulas deduced in this paper. The accuracy of the orbital elements is validated by the computer simulation results presented in this paper. Copyright by Science in China Press 2004.