Abstract
When the formation flying consists of satellites that are independent from each other and form a virtual synthetic aperture telescope that replaces a single large telescope with all of its optical elements, mutual coordination between the satellites with high accuracy is required in order to achieve good optical observations.In this paper, we consider the problem of developing a control system for a tetrahedral satellite formation flying, representing a synthetic aperture telescope in geostationary orbit, for high-resolution monitoring of forest fires in the infrared spectrum.esizing an image with good quality requires maintaining the configuration of the formation with µm-class accuracy.A study of the dynamics of passive uncontrolled motion in formation flying showed a significant deviation from the required shape at high frequency due to gravitational forces.To keep the configuration in the required form with micrometer accuracy, an analysis of the efficiency of various controllers was carried out through numerical simulations.The simulation results highlighted the features of using various approaches to develop a control system for the satellite formation flying representing a synthetic aperture telescope.