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This paper addresses the problem of powered descent control of a lunar lander during its final landing phase, where soft and precise landing at the target cite is required. In the literature, this problem has been solved considering a fully actuated lunar lander. Recently, landers are designed as complex systems with several onboard payloads and subsystems for completing demanding mission tasks. There are increasing constraints on mass budget and space availability onboard a lander. In order to meet these requirements, a novel controller using a single thruster is proposed. The proposed controller has three control inputs (thrust and two gimbaled angles) to control the six degrees of motion of a lander; these control inputs are non-affine. The proposed controller is designed based on variable structure control technique augmented with a high order filter, an immersion and invariance-based mass estimator and a sliding mode angular velocity observer. The stability analysis using Lyapunov theory and the results of the numerical simulations along with Monte Carlo simulations of the system show that the precise landing of the lunar lander using a single thruster is feasible. • The position and attitude control of a lunar lander using a single thruster is examined. • A novel controller along with lander mass and angular velocity observers are designed. • The proposed controller is based on variable structure control technique. • The Lyapunov theory is applied to prove the stability of the proposed control scheme. • Results of numerical simulations show the feasibility of the proposed control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper studies the relative position tracking and attitude synchronization problem of spacecraft rendezvous with the requirement of collision avoidance. To achieve the implementation of the rendezvous procedure, the docking port of the chaser is required to direct towards the counterpart of the target, while the relative distance between the two spacecraft should be larger than the radius of the danger zone during close proximity phase. In order to address the concerned problem, a novel sliding mode control strategy based on artificial potential function is developed, and more specifically, the sliding manifold of the close-loop system is chosen along the negative gradient of the artificial potential function. Within the Lyapunov framework, the proposed control laws are proved to guarantee the convergence of relative position and attitude errors while avoiding any accidental collision between the two spacecraft, even in the presence of external disturbance. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed control laws. Highlights • Nonlinear relative pose control for spacecraft proximity operation with the requirement of collision avoidance is presented. • State feedback control laws are developed by employing artificial potential field and sliding mode technique. • A 6DOF simulation example is carried out to demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed control laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High pointing accuracy and stabilization are significant for spacecrafts to carry out Earth observing, laser communication and space exploration missions. However, when a spacecraft undergoes large angle maneuver, the excited elastic oscillation of flexible appendages, for instance, solar wing and onboard antenna, would downgrade the performance of the spacecraft platform. This paper proposes a coupling control method, which synthesizes the adaptive sliding mode controller and the positive position feedback (PPF) controller, to control the attitude and suppress the elastic vibration simultaneously. Because of its prominent performance for attitude tracking and stabilization, the proposed method is capable of slewing the flexible spacecraft with a large angle. Also, the method is robust to parametric uncertainties of the spacecraft model. Numerical simulations are carried out with a hub-plate system which undergoes a single-axis attitude maneuver. An attitude control testbed for the flexible spacecraft is established and experiments are conducted to validate the coupling control method. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the method discussed above can effectively decrease the stabilization time and improve the attitude accuracy of the flexible spacecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a promising solution for active space debris capture and removal, a maneuverable Tethered Space Net Robot (TSNR) is proposed as an improved Space Tethered Net (TSN). In addition to the advantages inherit to the TSN, the TSNR's maneuverability expands the capture's potential. However, oscillations caused by the TSNR's flexibility and elasticity of make higher requests of the control scheme. Based on the dynamics model, a modified adaptive super-twisting sliding mode control scheme is proposed in this paper for TSNR stability control. The proposed continuous control force can effectively suppress oscillations. Theoretical verification and numerical simulations demonstrate that the desired trajectory can be tracked steadily and efficiently by employing the proposed control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new and improved concept of recently proposed two-degrees of freedom spherical stabilizer for triaxial orientation of microsatellites. The analytical analysis of the advantages of the proposed mechanism over the existing inertial attitude control devices are introduced. The extended equations of motion of the stabilizing satellite including the spherical gyroscope, for control law design and numerical simulations, are studied in detail. A new control algorithm based on continuous high-order sliding mode algorithms, for managing the torque produced by the stabilizer and therefore the attitude control of the satellite in the presence of perturbations/uncertainties, is presented. Some numerical simulations are carried out to prove the performance of the proposed mechanism and control laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual-arm space robots are more capable of implementing complex space tasks compared with single arm space robots. However, the dynamic coupling between the arms and the base will have a serious impact on the spacecraft attitude and the hand motion of each arm. Instead of considering one arm as the mission arm and the other as the balance arm, in this work two arms of the space robot perform as mission arms aimed at accomplishing secure capture of a floating target. The paper investigates coordinated control of the base's attitude and the arms' motion in the task space in the presence of system uncertainties. Two types of controllers, i.e. a Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) and a nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (MPC) are verified and compared with a conventional Computed-Torque Controller (CTC) through numerical simulations in terms of control accuracy and system robustness. Both controllers eliminate the need to linearly parameterize the dynamic equations. The MPC has been shown to achieve performance with higher accuracy than CTC and SMC in the absence of system uncertainties under the condition that they consume comparable energy. When the system uncertainties are included, SMC and CTC present advantageous robustness than MPC. Specifically, in a case where system inertia increases, SMC delivers higher accuracy than CTC and costs the least amount of energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A robust entry guidance law based on terminal sliding mode and second-order differentiator is designed for trajectory tracking in this paper. The bank angle is regarded as the control variable. A novel nonlinear compound controller is designed to make the system with the trajectory-tracking error and its rate as states be input-to-state stable (ISS) with respect to uncertainties. The terminal sliding mode controller is designed to the problem of entry guidance by using the second-order differentiator to estimate the total disturbances. The proposed nonlinear compound control law by employing the second-order differentiator and the terminal sliding mode controller, provide robustness, higher control precision. Also, simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new nonlinear guidance algorithm applicable for asteroid both hovering and landing. With the new guidance, a spacecraft achieves its target position and velocity in finite-time without the requirement of reference trajectories. The global stability is proven for the controlled system. A parametric analysis is conducted to illustrate the parameters’ effects on the guidance algorithm. Simulations of straight landing, hovering to hovering and landing with a prior hovering phase of the highly irregular asteroid 2063 Bacchus are presented and the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feasibility of achieving reliable control for spacecraft formation keeping and reconfiguration without the need for thrust in either the radial or along-track direction is explored in this paper. Analysis of the linearized dynamics without along-track input indicates the presence of an uncontrollable eigenvalue at the origin. A nonlinear controller is designed to indirectly stabilize the uncontrollable modes to a stable manifold around the equilibrium. Conditions for robustness against unmatched uncertainties and disturbances are derived to establish the regions of asymptotic stabilization. The benefits of the proposed control method are also validated via numerical simulations to show that precise formation maintenance can be achieved by dealing with the issues of system nonlinearities, variations in initial conditions, and external disturbances, concurrently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Minimum Sliding Mode Error Feedback Control (MSMEFC) is proposed to improve the control precision of spacecraft formations based on the conventional sliding mode control theory. This paper proposes a new approach to estimate and offset the system model errors, which include various kinds of uncertainties and disturbances, as well as smoothes out the effect of nonlinear switching control terms. To facilitate the analysis, the concept of equivalent control error is introduced, which is the key to the utilization of MSMEFC. A cost function is formulated on the basis of the principle of minimum sliding mode error; then the equivalent control error is estimated and fed back to the conventional sliding mode control. It is shown that the sliding mode after the MSMEFC will approximate to the ideal sliding mode, resulting in improved control performance and quality. The new methodology is applied to spacecraft formation flying. It guarantees global asymptotic convergence of the relative tracking error in the presence of J 2 perturbations. In addition, some fault tolerant situations such as thruster failure for a period of time, thruster degradation and so on, are also considered to verify the effectiveness of MSMEFC. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology to maintain and reconfigure the satellite formation with the existence of initial offsets and J 2 perturbation effects, even in the fault-tolerant cases. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a general framework for synchronized multiple spacecraft rotations via consensus-based virtual structure. In this framework, attitude control systems for formation spacecrafts and virtual structure are designed separately. Both parametric uncertainty and external disturbance are taken into account. A time-varying sliding mode control (TVSMC) algorithm is designed to improve the robustness of the actual attitude control system. As for the virtual attitude control system, a behavioral consensus algorithm is presented to accomplish the attitude maneuver of the entire formation and guarantee a consistent attitude among the local virtual structure counterparts during the attitude maneuver. A multiple virtual sub-structures (MVSSs) system is introduced to enhance current virtual structure scheme when large amounts of spacecrafts are involved in the formation. The attitude of spacecraft is represented by modified Rodrigues parameter (MRP) for its non-redundancy. Finally, a numerical simulation with three synchronization situations is employed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a dual-stage control system design method for the rotational maneuver control and vibration stabilization of a flexible spacecraft. In this design approach, the sub-systems of attitude control and vibration suppression are designed separately using the low order model. Based on the sliding mode control (SMC) theory, a discontinuous attitude control law in the form of the input voltage of the reaction wheel is derived to control the orientation of the spacecraft, incorporating the L2-gain performance criterion constraint. The resulting closed-loop system is proven to be uniformly ultimately bounded stability and the effect of the external disturbance on both attitude quaternion and angular velocity can be attenuated to the prescribed level as well. In addition, an adaptive version of the control law is designed for adapting the unknown upper bounds of the lumped disturbance such that the limitation of knowing the bound of the disturbance in advance is released. For actively suppressing the induced vibration, strain rate feedback control method is also investigated by using piezoelectric materials as additional sensors and actuators bonded on the surface of the flexible appendages. Numerical simulations are performed to show that rotational maneuver and vibration suppression are accomplished in spite of the presence of disturbance and uncertainty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]