An improved nonlinear control strategy for deep space formation flying spacecraft

This paper aims to provide further study on the nonlinear modeling and controller design of formation flying spacecraft in deep space missions. First, in the Sun–Earth system, the nonlinear formation dynamics for the circular restricted three-body problem (CRTBP) and elliptic restricted three-body problem (ERTBP) are presented. Then, with the Floquet mode method, an impulsive controller is developed to keep the Chief on the desired Halo orbit. Finally, a nonlinear adaptive control scheme based on Nonzero set-point LQR and neural network is proposed to achieve high precision formation maneuver and keeping. The simulation results indicate that the proposed nonlinear control strategy is reasonable as it considers not only the orbit keeping of the Chief, but also the formation modeling inaccuracy. Moreover, the nonlinear adaptive control scheme is effective to improve the control accuracy of the formation keeping.