Impulsive zone model predictive control for rendezvous hovering phases

Abstract

In this manuscript, an impulsive zone MPC formulationis proposed to tackle the problem of the spacecraftrendezvous control. The control objective is to maintain thefollower spacecraft in a given subspace with respect to a leadervehicle by stabilizing the set of periodic relative orbits includedin a given hovering zone. The idea is to incorporate this hoveringzone as a target set into the MPC cost function, in orderto permit a single MPC formulation and a receding horizonimplementation. The control algorithm takes advantages ofa relative motion parametrization for which the set of theequilibrium states represent the set of periodic orbits to provethe stability of the hovering zone and to enlarge significantlythe domain of attraction. Several simulation results show that,in addition, performances in terms of convergence speed andfuel consumption are improved compare to previous works.