Patent ID: 8150567

Claim:
A control device (D) for a spacecraft (Si) of a group of spacecraft intended to travel in a chosen formation, comprising: a set of at least three send/receive antennas (Aj) installed on at least three differently oriented faces of said spacecraft (Si) and adapted to send/receive radio-frequency signals, processor means (MT) adapted to estimate the send directions of signals sent by the other spacecraft (Si′) of the group on the basis of said signals received by said antennas (Aj), first measuring means (M 1 ) adapted to determine the power of the signals received by each of said antennas (Aj) and to deliver sets of powers each associated with one of said other spacecraft (Si′) of the group, storage means (BD) adapted to store sets of cartographic data each representative of the powers of the signals received by each of said antennas (Aj) as a function of chosen send directions, and control means (MC) adapted, in the event of assignment of a send time period and a complementary receive time period to each spacecraft of said group, in accordance with a chosen scheme, to divide the send and receive time periods assigned to their spacecraft (Si) into numbers of send sub-slices and receive sub-slices each equal to the number of send/receive antennas (Aj) of their spacecraft (Si), and to assign a send sub-slice to each of said send/receive antennas (Aj) in accordance with a first chosen order and a receive sub-slice to each of said send/receive antennas (Aj) according to a second chosen order, each send/receive antenna (Aj) being then authorized to send during the send sub-slice assigned to it and to receive during the receive sub-slice assigned to it, and each set of powers delivered relating to signals received by said send/receive antennas (Aj) during their respective receive sub-slices, wherein said processor means (MT) are adapted to compare each set of powers delivered by said first measuring means (M 1 ) to said stored sets of cartographic data so as to estimate each send direction of the signals sent by the other spacecraft (Si′) of the group with respect to a system of axes fixed with respect to said spacecraft (Si).