Abstract
The guidance and control problem of spacecraft approaching an asteroid using constant continuous thrust is studied in this work. The range of interest is from hundreds of kilometers to several kilometers, in which relative measurements of much higher accuracy than based on Earth can be used to facilitate further hovering or landing operations. Time-fixed glideslope guidance algorithm is improved by introducing a substitute of an existing control parameter and combined with elliptical relative orbital dynamics to rendezvous the spacecraft with a prescribed location in the proximity of a given asteroid. A vast range of values for the control parameters are explored and suitable combinations are found. To fully validate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed control algorithm, Monte Carlo simulations are done with the navigational error and implementation error considered.
Highlights
Guidance for Approaching theWith an increasing interest in asteroid exploration, research on the design and control of trajectories towards the close vicinity of asteroids has gained much attention [1,2,3]
Since the key problems and conditions are identical to the near-Earth rendezvous problem [5], where constraints are imposed on both the final relative position and velocity, the control issue of the transfer to the vicinity of an asteroid can be regarded as a rendezvous problem in the heliocentric two-body dynamics background, where the Tschauner–Hempel (TH) equations [5] provide good, approximated solutions to the first order for elliptical orbits
Compared with error set II, the only difference is the implementation error increases from 0.5% to 2%
Summary
With an increasing interest in asteroid exploration, research on the design and control of trajectories towards the close vicinity of asteroids has gained much attention [1,2,3]. One of the major issues is how to guide the spacecraft from hundreds of kilometers to the vicinity of a given asteroid. This phase relies not on Earth-based telemetry, but on relative measurements and autonomous control by the spacecraft itself. It should be noted that the relative range under consideration is from hundreds of kilometers to several kilometers, which belongs to the classical near-range rendezvous process The aim for this stage is not to land the spacecraft on the asteroid, but to make observations or get preparation at a required distance. Glideslope guidance is a multi-impulse trajectory transfer algorithm and has been applied to near Earth rendezvous studies.
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