A stealthy method to determine the relative position and velocity for satellite formation flying

To achieve the satellite formation control and the succeed formation missions, we present a new stealthy method to determine the relative states between formation satellites. In this method, the combination of a CCD camera and laser radar is used as the relative measure sensors. To reduce electromagnetic radiation, the laser radar works intermittently to minimize the probability of being discovered. And an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to estimate the relative states. The observability of this method is analyzed. The validity and effectiveness of the method is demonstrated in a typical application of formation relative navigation.