A novel nonlinear control for tracking and rendezvous with a rotating non-cooperative target with translational maneuver

This paper studies the control of flexible chaser spacecraft to track and rendezvous with a rotating noncooperative target accompanied by translational maneuver. The problem is formulated that the chaser spacecraft is required to track target position and be synchronized with its attitude precisely. Meanwhile, the elastic vibration, induced by large angular maneuver in the tracking process, needs to be reduced. With respect to this unique movement of target, a novel modified theta-D control method, derived by standard theta-D algorithm and Lyapunov min-max value theorem, is proposed, to incorporate position, attitude and flexural motion into one united control frame. The modification term in the proposed control method is dealt with target translational maneuver, which is the primary contribution in this paper. The asymptotically stability of closed-loop system is proved via the Lyapunov theory and Lyapunov min-max value theorem. Numerical results demonstrate an excellent tracking performance of proposed united control frame even under large inertia uncertainties.