ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

Future space missions will increasingly use larger numbers of satellites to achieve specific mission goals. The cooperative motion for teams of autonomous small spacecraft systems will also become increasingly important for the future space missions such as docking, formation flying and proximity operations. This paper describes the framework we are developing using the Comprehensive Open-architecture Space Mission Operations System (COSMOS) for the Guidance, Navigation and Control of two or more satellites. We also introduce a guidance law that optimizes fuel consumption for the multi-satellite system. An important outcome of this work is the development of a comprehensive software that extends the iGNC framework to almost flight-ready software that is modular and easy to improve, and can also be used for mission simulation rehearsals.