Solar sail cooperative formation flying around L2-type artificial equilibrium points

The aim of this paper is to propose a distributed control architecture for a solar sail-based formation, flying around an L2-type artificial equilibrium point in the Sun-[Earth + Moon] circular restricted three-body problem. Two typical cases, depending on whether the formation structure is leaderless or includes a virtual leader, are investigated. In particular, the virtual leader case is further analyzed according to whether the state information of the virtual leader is available to all of the sails or to a part of the formation structure only. The protocols of the consensus-based algorithms are formulated on a general directed (unidirectional) communication topology, by exploring each available local neighbor-to-neighbor information interaction in a cooperative manner. In that case, a synchronized formation tracking may be achieved while increasing the reliability of the formation system. Illustrative examples show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in a typical mission scenario.