Development and testing of technologies for autonomous navigation and control of formation flying nanosatellites

Project objectives The proposed research is part of a national project (coordinated by the University of Rome) aimed at developing and in-flight testing innovative technologies for formation flying nanosatellites. The formation will be composed by three nanosatellites (a mother satellite and two smaller satellites) developed in cooperation by the three university teams. Project innovative aspects are: formation flying of satellites connected by tethers, formation flying of free-flying satellites with communication interlinks, in-flight testing of autonomous navigation and control systems and logics. In this context, the specific project of the research unit at the University of Naples "Federico II" deals with the development of advanced techniques and technologies for the autonomous navigation and control of the nanosatellites' formation. The research will take advantage of the team experience in microsatellite design and development and in space system guidance, navigation and control. In particular, innovative solutions will be investigated to develop an autonomous navigation and control system based on Differential GPS (DGPS) and sensor fusion technologies. Since the project focus is on distributed systems of nanosatellites, solutions will be analyzed based on the use of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) and CMOS (Complementary MOS) technologies to develop compact sensors and actuators.