Earlier SSC already performed the AFF (Autonomous Formation Flying) Early Harvest experiment (see http://www.prismasatellites.se/aff-early-harvest.aspx). The previously gained experience was now used to improve the performance for the completion of the AFF experiments performed on April 06 – 13.
Starting from a safe formation with a maximum horizontal distance (z-component) of 100 m and a maximum vertical distance of 100 m (y-component) MANGO’s approach towards TANGO was introduced. First a reduction under less than 50 m took placed in horizontal as well as vertical distance, while the mean along-track distance stayed almost unchanged close to 0 m (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Along-track (x:=blue), vertical (y:=green) and horizontal (z:=red) distances during one day of AFF-completion
After several little changes and successful formation keeping maneuvers over some days, demonstrating the flexibility of the system (e.g. see Fig.2) finally on the 12th of April the cross-track and radial components (y and z) were reduced until completely gone, thus a highly unstable and dangerous formation was acquired while the along-track distance was further reduced down to 15m (see Fig. 3).
After reaching the required close formation of less than 15 m 3D-distance in the early morning hours of April 13 quickly a stable formation was established and SSC was happy about the successful completion of their AFF experiment.
