Formation flying along halo orbit of circular-restricted three-Body problem

A new control strategy based on output regulation theory is proposed for formation flying along a halo orbit near a libration point in the circular-restricted three-body problem. The reference orbit is a periodic or shifted perturbation of the halo orbit generated by an exosystem, and modification of linear output regulation theory is employed. First, the station keeping problem is considered, and the total velocity change required for the halo orbit maintenance is found to be negligible. The reasonable size of a perturbation can be determined numerically, and hence the formation flying proposed in this paper is useful for the design of a reference orbit along a halo orbit. The proposed relative orbit and control strategy are independent of halo orbits and can be applied to formation flying along an arbitrary path.