Micro-arcsecond Line-of-Sight Filtered Performance for Spacecraft Formation Flying

Formation Flying is the concept that multiple spacecraft can be arranged in a formation to perform tasks that are not possible with a single spacecraft, or tasks that can be done more efficiently or inexpensively with a group of small spacecraft. One of the main engineering problems to be overcome is that of orienting or pointing a spacecraft to a very high degree of precision. Many approaches have focused on improving the performance and accuracy of the hardware used to determine the current orientation of the spacecraft. Here, orientation is related the line-of-sight accuracy between one spacecraft and another, not the overall relative attitude. The approach in this paper explores filtering algorithms for the goal of determining the minimum hardware requirements necessary to obtain microarcsecond line-of-sight pointing knowledge. This may allow for the use of less expensive hardware in future formation flying missions and may vastly improve mission capability.