Formation maintenance of very small parasitic, receiving-only SARs flying in formation with a transmitting radar is studied. Formation is in low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400km, where the main cause of formation disruption is differential drag. It causes both a differential altitude reduction and a mean anomaly shift. The paper shows that compensation of mean anomaly shift is the main driver for DV budget, whereas the simple altitude compensation does not have a big impact. Thus, a strategy is proposed to account for the differential altitude correction only, with natural dynamics working to compensate for the anomaly shift. The effect is a one/two order of magnitude decrease of required DV.
Separation Maintenance of Parasitic Distributed SAR Systems in Low Earth Orbits
D'Errico Marco
;Barretta D.
2023
Abstract
Formation maintenance of very small parasitic, receiving-only SARs flying in formation with a transmitting radar is studied. Formation is in low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400km, where the main cause of formation disruption is differential drag. It causes both a differential altitude reduction and a mean anomaly shift. The paper shows that compensation of mean anomaly shift is the main driver for DV budget, whereas the simple altitude compensation does not have a big impact. Thus, a strategy is proposed to account for the differential altitude correction only, with natural dynamics working to compensate for the anomaly shift. The effect is a one/two order of magnitude decrease of required DV.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
