Flying Sensors – Swarms in Space

Abstract

The aim of the Flying Sensors research group is to develop swarm technologies for future, high-performance space-based applications. In a swarm, a large number of autonomous spacecraft cooperate with each other to jointly perform their tasks. Combining them in different formations improves both temporal and spatial sensor coverage and allows the simultaneous combination of different instruments with different perspectives. Swarms are thus valuable for large-scale space and earth observation. Our specific objective is to develop and examine solutions for distributed disaster monitoring, traffic control and atmospheric soundings. Autonomous behaviour for each swarm element and the swarm as a whole is also a basic prerequisite for future deep-space exploration. Ground-controlled setups are mostly inadequate because the radio signals delay is too long to respond to short-term events. Having a large number of systems arranged in a redundant constellation also improves fail safety and makes services more robust (e.g. in the case of solar bursts) compared with a single spacecraft. To limit the costs of such an installation, we intend to develop a small cluster of lightweight (nano-)satellites based on commercial off-the-shelf components and release them as a secondary payload in low earth orbit.