Development of a control system for docking mission of small spacecraft optimizing energy consumption and fuel of the actuators

• Published in: 2022 61st Annual Conference of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) pp. 1337 - 1342
• Main Authors: Nishimura, Asumi, Tsujita, Katsuyoshi
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers - SICE 06-09-2022
• Subjects: Actuators; Aerospace electronics; Docking; Energy consumption; Instruments; Numerical simulation; Optimal control; Small spacecraft; Space vehicles
• DOI: 10.23919/SICE56594.2022.9905853

Autonomous docking of small spacecraft has become one of the technologies to be established in space development. As a fundamental study for the development of autonomous docking technology for small spacecraft, this study aims to find the optimal control inputs for the rendezvous approach with as low energy and fuel consumption as possible in a small spacecraft with limited hardware resources. This paper conducted numerical simulations and hardware experiments to verify the control performance. In the experiments, we used a small spacecraft mockup on a two-dimensional plane and air bearings to control the motion of the small spacecraft to perform the rendezvous approach with minimal energy and fuel consumption.