Orbit and attitude control of spacecraft formation flying

摘要

Formation flying is a novel concept of distributing the flmctionality of large spacecraft among several smaller,less expensive,cooperative satellites.Some applica- tions require that a controllable satellite keeps relative position and attitude to observe a specific surface of another satellite among the cluster.Specially,the target space vehi- cle is malfunctioning.The present paper focuses on the problem that how to control a chaser satellite to fly around an out-of-work target satellite closely in earth orbit and to track a specific surface.Relative attitude and first approximate relative orbital dynamics equations are presented.Control strategy is derived based on feedback linearization and Lyapunov theory of stability.Further,considering the uncertainty of inertia,an adaptive control method is developed to obtain the correct inertial ratio.The numerical simulation is given to verify the validity of proposed control scheme.