Spacecraft formation flying configuration design for space-based gravitational wave observatory

The gravitational waves observatory(GWO) provides a new method to reveal the evolution of the universe and the laws of fundamental physics. The basic principle of GWO is that three spacecraft form an equilateral triangle formation in space. Therefore, a design method of equilateral triangle formation is proposed in this paper, the space circle configuration is constructed by CW equation, then the equilateral triangle formation is constructed by phase uniform distribution. Due to the CW equation has only first-order accuracy, the configuration will diverge under the influence of the perturbation force, the configuration optimization is achieved by energy-matching method. Finally, the adaptive dynamic programming(ADP) method is used to complete the configuration initialization process, it can be seen from the simulation results that ideal results have been achieved.