  The main focus of the work presented in this thesis is to develop an optimal
control based formation flying control strategy for high precision formation
flying of small satellites that have restricted computation and storage
capacity. Using the recently developed model predictive static programming
(MPSP), and Generalized MPSP algorithm a suboptimal guidance logic is presented
for the formation flying of small satellites. The proposed guidance scheme is
valid both for high eccentricity chief satellite orbits as well as the large
separation distance between the chief and deputy satellites. Comparative study
with standard Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) solution (which serves as a
guess solution for MPSP) and another nonlinear controller, Finite-time
State-Dependent Ricatti Equation (SDRE) reveals that MPSP guidance achieves the
objective with higher accuracy and with a lesser amount of control usage.
