Establishing a Formation of Small Satellites in a Lunar Flower Constellation

The success of previous lunar science missions can be expanded upon by using a constellation of satellites to increase the lunar surface coverage. A constellation could also serve as a communications or GPS network for a lunar human base. Small-sats, deployed from a single mothercraft, are proposed to achieve a lunar constellation. The establishment of a single- and multi-petal constellation is investigated where the mothercraft does the primary deployment maneuvers. The constellation lifetime and closed-loop maintenance are addressed once higher order lunar gravity fields and Earth/solar perturbations are included.