Future space missions are being developed that will focus on multi-spacecraft distributed systems. Clusters of satellites flying in close proximity can decrease mission costs and increase performance, reliability, adaptability and survivability of space missions. Such missions require a degree of autonomy usually achieved through automatic control systems.

 Much of current work in formation flying control has focused on control optimization to execute prescribed maneuvers within fixed constraints such as minimum time or fuel. On the other hand, decentralized control algorithms have received considerable attention in the past few years. People in distributed space system lab are working on development of new state of the art control algorithms for decentralized and centralized control of distributed space systems using classical and modern techniques.