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EARTH-CENTRIC spacecraft have been designed for decades as monolithic systems, which are highly integrated systems conceived to fulfill a set of goals satisfying certain user needs. Such systems include dedicated space and ground segments that may go unused or be decommissioned after the end of the mission. As space missions have been traditionally designed as highly tailored projects, engineers always worked to conceive their systems as “stovepipe” craft (ie, systems that do not share data with other spacecraft). However, the space industry nowadays is looking at concepts involving distributed satellite systems (DSS) that, for the purposes of this paper, we define as a space system allocating functionality among multiple spacecraft that interact in order to achieve desired goals. This definition is consistent with others in the

Daniel Selva is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering …