Concomitant orbital keeping and control

Concomitant satellite is a kind of satellite to serve for its main satellite. In common, concomitant satellite goes along concomitant orbit that is relative to and around the main satellite. Because the perturbations between the main satellite and concomitant satellite are different, concomitant orbit is changing gradually. Orbital control is needed to keep the designed concomitant orbit. It is different from around earth orbital control that concomitant orbital control is indirect. Concomitant orbit can be controlled through changing the main satellite orbit, or concomitant satellite orbit, and or the main satellite orbit and concomitant satellite orbit at the same time. In fact, changing concomitant satellite orbit is the better way to control concomitant orbit that cost is low and control is flexible. In the paper, impulse control is used for concomitant orbital control. Two-impulse control is studied. Based on concomitant motion sate transferring equation, analytic solution of two-impulse concomitant orbital transfer is derived, the control variables are optimized by means of genetic algorithm, and optimal transfer time and trajectories are gained. From the simulations, the concomitant orbital control method in the paper is effective.