Station-Keeping of L2 Halo Orbits Under Sampled-Data Model Predictive Control

The dynamics of a spacecraft in the Earth–moon gravitational system involving the restricted three-body problem [RTBP] exhibit equilibria commonly known as libration or Lagrangian points. Researchers provide a new control scheme assuming the elliptic RTBP model under the influence of SRP that captures the principal feature of the dynamics while retaining simplicity. A modified model predictive control (MPC) approach is also proposed to cope with real-time implementation issues as, such as the digital nature of both actuation and sensing and possible limits on control, unavoidable in practice. Researchers specifically consider the case in which measures are available only at sporadic time instants, whereas the control is piecewise constant over the sampling period. The proposed approach is based on the design of multirate (MR) strategies at the planning level providing a suitable reference governor for an MPC control scheme.