The technology of formation flying has great potential for the future of space engineering: unlimited formation size, flexibility of functions, reduced cost, easy system upgrade and so on. However the oblateness of the earth, the J2 effect, causes deterioration of formation shape. In order to keep the shape of a formation, which is usually necessary to accomplish missions, formation keeping control has to be done. This control should be efficient to minimize fuel consumption. This paper focuses on only J2 perturbation effect on satellites, and discusses theoretically how much fuel we need to keep formations. Once you know the fuel consumption dependent on certain parameters, you can design the parameters to reduce the fuel consumption as much as possible under your mission requirements. The purpose of this paper is to make a guideline for designing efficient formation.
Theoretical equation of minimal fuel consumption for satellites' formation keeping control under J2 perturbation
