Spacecraft formation flying refers to the coordinated operation of a group of spacecraft
with a common objective. While the concept has been in existence for a long time, practical
fruition of the ideas was not possible earlier due to technological limitations. The topic
has received widespread attention in the last decade, with the development of autonomous
control, improved computational facilities and better communication technology. It allows a
number of small, lightweight, economical spacecraft to work together to execute the function
of a larger, heavier, more complex and expensive spacecraft. The primary advantage of such
systems is that they are flexible, modular, and cost-effective.
The flexibility of formation flying and other derived concepts comes from the fact that
the units are not physically attached, allowing them to change position or orientation when
the need arises. To fully realize this possibility, it is important to develop methods for spatial
reorganization. This thesis is an attempt to contribute to this development.
In this thesis, the reconfiguration problem has been formulated as a single system with
multiple inputs and multiple outputs, while preserving the individuality of the agents to
a certain degree. The agents are able to communicate with their neighbors by sharing
information. In this framework, a distributed closed-loop stabilizing controller has been
developed, that would drive the spacecraft formation to a target shape. An expression for
the controller gain as a function of the graph Laplacian eigenvalues has also been derived.
The practical applications of this work have been demonstrated through simulations