Long-Duration Station-Keeping Strategy for Cislunar Spacecraft Formations

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a novel guidance and control strategy for cislunar near-rectilinear halo orbit formation-keeping applied to high-fidelity dynamics. Bounded relative motion is constructed about long-duration ephemeris trajectories with osculating invariant circles to form quasi-periodic relative orbits. State-of-the-art absolute control strategies are paired with a simple and effective relative control feedback law. Finally, a control barrier function is implemented to ensure recursively passively-safe bounded relative motion under feedback in the presence of possible missed maneuver events for the duration of the formation flight. The strategy is verified in high-fidelity simulation environments through Monte Carlo trials.