Deployment of Small Satellite Constellations Using the Effect of the Earth’s Oblateness

In recent years, the interest in using small satellite constellations has increased due to the reduction of cost and time as well as the greater capabilities of small satellites. This is despite the fact that today, due to high launch costs, new launch strategies have replaced the traditional methods of launching constellations to mission orbits. Depending on the mission of the constellation, various methods have been proposed for launching and deploying satellites in the mission orbit, which are classified in one of two categories, direct or indirect. In this paper, an indirect method for deploying the satellites of a constellation to several orbital planes has been investigated. This method is based on changing the orbital planes with the positive use of the earth's oblateness perturbation in addition to using the satellite propulsion subsystem. This method has been simulated and analyzed for two real satellite constellations with remote sensing and global internet missions. Also, based on this method, the launch and deployment strategy for a regional satellite navigation system covering Iran with 130 satellites has been designed and implemented. The obtained results have been analyzed in terms of the time required for the launch and the required ΔV.