Related papers: The Delicate Dance of Orbital Rendezvous
This paper solves the rendezvous problem for a network of underactuated rigid bodies such as quadrotor helicopters. A control strategy is presented that makes the centres of mass of the vehicles converge to an arbitrarily small neighborhood…
The attraction of the Moon on objects at the surface of the Earth gives rise to a so-called tidal force which is of the order of 1/10,000,000 times the gravitational force of the Earth. For instance, when the Moon is located between the…
The computation of the Minimum Orbital Intersection Distance (MOID) is an old, but increasingly relevant problem. Fast and precise methods for MOID computation are needed to select potentially hazardous asteroids from a large catalogue. The…
The navigation satellite constellations in medium-Earth orbit exist in a background of third-body secular resonances stemming from the perturbing gravitational effects of the Moon and the Sun. The resulting chaotic motions, emanating from…
A deep-space exploration mission with low-thrust propulsion to rendezvous with multiple asteroids is investigated. Indirect methods, based on the optimal control theory, are implemented to optimize the fuel consumption. The application of…
The concept of Space Manifold Dynamics is a new method of space research. We have applied it along with the basic idea of the method of Ott, Grebogi and York (OGY method) to stabilize the motion of a spacecraft around the triangular…
A method is developed to calculate collision probability in this paper. Based on the encounter geometric features of space objects, it is reasonable to separate the radial orbital motions from that in the cross section for most encounter…
Tumbling asteroids belong to a small group of objects, whose angular velocity vector is unaligned with any of its principal axes of inertia. This leads to challenging efforts to model the trajectory of any spacecraft designed to orbit these…
The paper considers autonomous rendezvous maneuver and proximity operations of two spacecraft in presence of obstacles. A strategy that combines guidance and control algorithms is analyzed. The proposed closed-loop system is able to…
A control framework is presented to solve the rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) problem of the EP-Gemini mission. In this mission, a CubeSat chaser is controlled to approach and circumnavigate the other uncooperative CubeSat target.…
This paper deals with the application of the creep tide theory (Ferraz-Mello, CeMDA 116, 109, 2013) to the rotation of close-in satellites, Mercury, close-in exoplanets and their host stars. The solutions show two extreme cases: close-in…
This paper presents a time-constrained model predictive control strategy for the 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) autonomous rendezvous and docking problem between a controllable "deputy" spacecraft and an uncontrollable "chief" spacecraft. The…
Gravitational tidal interactions drive long-term rotational and orbital evolution in planetary systems, in multiple (particularly close binary) star systems and in planetary moon systems. Dissipation of tidal flows in Earth's oceans is…
This paper proposes a solution for multiple-impulse orbital maneuvers near circular orbits for special cases where orbital observations are not globally available and the spacecraft is being observed through a limited window from a ground…
The motion of astronomical bodies and the centre of mass of the system is not always well perceived by students. One of the struggles is the conceptual change of reference frame, which is the same that held back the acceptance of the…
Current space exploration programs call for the establishment of a permanent Human presence on the Moon. This paper considers periodic orbits of a shuttle between the Earth and the Moon. Such a shuttle will be needed to bring supplies to…
It is commonly asserted that superluminal particle motion can enable backward time travel, but little has been written providing details. It is shown here that the simplest example of a "closed loop" event -- a twin paradox scenario where a…
A global model is presented that can be used to study attitude maneuvers of a rigid spacecraft in a circular orbit about a large central body. The model includes gravity gradient effects that arise from the non-uniform gravity field and…
Planetary systems formed in clusters may be subject to stellar encounter flybys. Here we create a diverse range of representative planetary systems with different orbital scales and planets' masses and examine encounters between them in a…
In this study, the potential locations of asteroidal small satellites (also called moonlets) with quasi-circular mutual orbit are analyzed. For the motion of the moonlets, only the solar gravity perturbation and the primary's 2nd…