A New Taxonomy for Distributed Spacecraft Missions

Due to many technical and programmatic changes, distributed spacecraft missions (DSMs) and constellations are becoming more common, both in national space agencies as well as in industry and academia. These changes are the results of various driving factors, such as maturing technologies, minimizing costs, and new science requirements. But they are also made possible by the availability of easier and more frequent launches and the capability to handle increased requirements in terms of scalable mission operations and “big” data analytics on the ground and onboard. With the increase in this type of missions and with the need to connect and interrelate all the data that will be generated by these various missions as well as with the data acquired from ground and airborne sensors, there is a need to define more accurately all the terms used in relation to DSMs. This article presents a terminology including various definitions that describe DSMs and related concepts, their organization, physical configuration, and functional configuration, as well as a taxonomy from which DSMs can be designed.