Genetic Fuzzy System-based Control for Final Approach of Spacecraft Rendezvous and Proximity Operations

In-space servicing has been receiving great attention to extend the operation of spacecraft with defective components. This requires rendezvous and proximity operations for a chaser to provide service to a target. This work constructs a fuzzy inference system-based controller for the chaser to reach the cooperative target on a circular orbit in the final approach phase while minimizing the energy consumption of the chaser. The offline training process performed by a genetic algorithm deals with multiple initial relative positions of the chaser, and the trained controller is validated using a testing environment with disturbances, which differs from the training scenarios.