Collaborative Navigation Strategies for Asteroid Deflection Satellite Formation

The paper focuses on the autonomous navigation method for a satellite formation-flying with an Earth-crossing asteroid. A novel model combines the spacecraft-to-asteroid measurements with inter-Sat communication to estimate the states of the satellites with respect to the asteroid based on Unscented Kalman filter formulation. Particular attention is given to the highly non-linear dynamics model with control input. Different stratigies are studied to find out an effective and precise navigation method. A fine result is obtained by comparing these cases. This work may give some contributions for the application of asteroid deflection.