How Mega-Constellations Are Learning to Manage Themselves

Satellite megaconstellations are quickly becoming the backbone of a number of industries. Cellular communication, GPS, weather monitoring and more are now, at least in part, reliant on the networks of thousands of satellites cruising by in low Earth orbit. But, as these constellations grow into the tens of thousands of individual members, the strain they are putting on the communications and controls systems of their ground stations is becoming untenable. A new paper from Yuhe Mao of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and their
co-authors hopes to alleviate some of that pressure by offloading much of the control scheme and network decision-making logic to satellites themselves.