Research on Decision Method of Spacecraft Cluster Combination Mode for In-Orbit Service

Abstract

In order to meet the requirements of in-orbit service, the spacecraft cluster is designed to expand and maintain the functions of cooperative in-orbit spacecraft. In order to improve the autonomy of spacecraft cluster, an intelligent decision-making layer is designed above the traditional working loop, which is facing to the in-orbit maintenance of cooperative target. It is used to making decisions on service strategy of the cluster and service instructions of each sub satellites according to the information of cooperative target and the expected task requirements. This service strategy decision-making method includes three sub modules. Firstly, we build a sub satellites selection module based on greedy selection by requirement quantification. Then, the decision-making of the combination pattern between the sub-sat and the target star is designed as a constrained optimization problem, and the optimal pattern is planned by genetic algorithm; then, the docking sequence of the sub satellites is planned by reverse division, and finally the service instructions of each sub-sat are calculated. The simulation results show that the intelligent decision-making layer can make the cluster independently complete the sub-sat selection, combination pattern decision and sub satellites combination sequence planning, which can effectively improve the autonomy and flexibility of using spacecraft cluster to upgrade the in-orbit cooperative target.