Attitude and orbit coupled control for non-cooperative rendezvous and docking

The controller that can avoid collision is needed for the service spacecraft rendezvous and docking with the non-cooperative target spacecraft. However, there is not a sophisticated control strategy to avoid collision between the service spacecraft and non-cooperative target spacecraft. The coupling motion model of attitude and orbit is established on the service spacecraft body coordinate system in this paper. A controller with coupled attitude and orbit dynamics is developed to realize the rendezvous and docking with the non-cooperative target spacecraft by using sliding mode control. The coupled controller can ensure that the service spacecraft is strictly in the safety area to avoid collision with the noncooperative target spacecraft by using artificial potential function and virtual obstacles model established based on cissoid. The system under the coupled controller is asymptotically stable by Lyapunov theory. Numerical simulation is performed on the coupled model. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.