Coupled position and attitude control of a servicer spacecraft in rendezvous with an orbiting target

Rendezvous is one of the fundamental phases of on-orbit servicing (OOS) missions. Since it requires high accuracy and safety, modeling is an indispensable part. Therefore, this article puts forward an approach for boosting the exactitude of the final proximity phase of a servicer spacecraft using precise modeling. Unlike other similar works that solely use linear models to design controllers, this paper employs a fully nonlinear model and considers most possible uncertainties and disturbances. In this regard, first a complete nonlinear relative pose (i.e., concurrent position attitude) motion dynamic is developed, which includes (1) the role of the reaction wheels and (2) the major environmental force and torque model. Second, taking the thruster's adverse torque into account, two sliding mode-based control techniques with different nonlinear sliding surfaces are designed. Moreover, the Lyapunov stability criterion is used to handle high nonlinearity effects, control input saturation, actuator misalignment, external disturbance torque/force, measurement error, uncertainties of both inertia parameters, and control inputs. Even the PWPF modulator of the thrusters has been considered to make the outcomes more realistic. Finally, three different scenarios are comprehensively simulated to illustrate the feasibility and efficiency of the designed scheme. The results prove that the proposed closed-form controller is more executable to implement than other existing approaches.