Introduction to the Special Section on Advances in Federated and Fractionated Satellite Systems

This Special Section of the Journal on Spacecraft and Rockets was created based on the 5th International Workshop on Federated and Fractionated Satellite Systems (FSS Workshop) that has taken place in at ISAE-SUPAERO, Toulouse, France, on 2 and 3 November 2017. The Fifth edition of the Workshop came after four events that had previously taken place at MIT (Boston) in 2012, at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Moscow) in 2014, at Cornell University (Ithaca) in 2015, and at La Sapienza University (Rome) in 2016. The workshop aimed at forging links to create a multidisciplinary and international research and industrial community that will follow novel approaches to innovate the way in which spacecraft missions are conceived, designed, implemented, and operated.