Robust Adaptive Control for Spacecraft Cooperative Rendezvous and Docking

The relative motion control for spacecraft cooperative rendezvous and docking is investigated. The relative position dynamics described in the target spacecraft's line-of-sight(LOS) frame and attitude tracking dynamics of the chaser spacecraft are all formulated in Euler-Lagrange forms. A simple robust adaptive controller is designed for the chaser with modeling uncertainties. This controller utilizes the relative motion information and the orbit & attitude information of the target spacecraft in real time, and it can be proved via the Lyapunov theory that the closed-loop system is uniformly ultimately bounded stable. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the stability and robustness of the controlled closed-loop system.