Application of SDRE technique to orbital and attitude control of spacecraft formation flying

This paper proposes the application of a nonlinear control technique for coupled orbital and attitude relative motion of formation flying. Recently, mission concepts based on the formations of spacecraft that require an increased performance level for in‐space maneuvers and operations, have been proposed. In order to guarantee the required performance level, those missions will be characterized by very low inter‐satellite distance and demanding relative pointing requirements. Therefore, an autonomous control with high accuracy will be required, both for the control of relative distance and relative attitude. The control system proposed in this work is based on the solution of the State‐Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE), which is one of the more promising nonlinear techniques for regulating nonlinear systems in all the major branches of engineering. The coupling of the relative orbital and attitude motion is obtained considering the same set of thrusters for the control of both orbital and attitude relative dynamics. In addition, the SDRE algorithm is implemented with a timing update strategy both for the controller and the proposed nonlinear filter. The proposed control system approach has been applied to the design of a nonlinear controller for an up‐to‐date formation mission, which is ESA Proba‐3. Numerical simulations considering a tracking signal for both orbital and attitude relative maneuver during an operative orbit of the mission are presented.