Guidance strategy design for space debris removal using fractionated spacecraft

Motivated by the versatility of fractionated spacecraft, we introduce a conceptual proposal for space debris removal. In the approach guidance, the fractionated spacecraft is separated into several modular spacecraft with different functions. Thereafter, they collaborate to implement the detection and removal of space debris. To guarantee the feasibility of the novel guidance mode, the separation strategy is investigated in this paper. First, the model of relative motion is established to obtain the quantification of separation strategy. Thereafter, the design criteria are presented in terms of several necessary constraints in the guidance phase. Furthermore, two practical performance indexes are proposed to optimize the separation strategy synthetically. Based on theoretical derivation and NSGA-II algorithm, the Pareto-optimal separation parameters are derived. Simulation results demonstrate the validness of the designed strategy.