Kinetic analysis on nano-pico satellite formation keeping

To solve the control precision problem of the nano-pico satellite formation keeping, which had been the bottleneck of the nano-pico satellite applications, such as the earth-orienting technology, the high precision control theory was proposed based on low thrusters and the bang-bang control. A hybrid control principle and the finite-state machine were used to design the precision optimization of the formation keeping. An energy optimization control theory was developed based on the precision optimization. Simulation results show that the validity of the proposed strategy makes the system quickly converge to the equilibrium point and improves the reliability and precision of the nano-pico satellite formation keeping on the low thrusters. The formation keeping precision can reach 1 μm, which means the precision is 10³ times better than the sliding mode method.