AUTONOMOUS COMMAND AND CONTROL FOR DISTRIBUTED SPACECRAFT SYSTEMS

The significant increase in the number of proposed science and military distributed spacecraft mission concepts has been built on the promise of expanded capability, improved robustness, and graceful degradation of assets. The challenge to realizing this promise lies in managing the complexity of any coordination required among the spacecraft and the ability to feasibly implement the systems. In addition, cost drivers, often related to launch services, commonly drive distributed spacecraft system designers to consider small, physically limited satellites (e.g., microsats or nanosats) as the assets in the space segment of the system. To address the challenge of complexity for coordinating multiple spacecraft in a practical manner, the described research details developments in autonomous command and control that leverage formal methods of discrete event systems. This approach is particularly applicable to small satellites because it can be developed at multiple levels of