Impulsive zone model predictive control for rendezvous hovering phases

International audienceIn this manuscript, an impulsive zone MPC formulation is proposed to tackle the problem of the spacecraft rendezvous control. The control objective is to maintain the follower spacecraft in a given subspace with respect to a leader vehicle by stabilizing the set of periodic relative orbits included in a given hovering zone. The idea is to incorporate this hovering zone as a target set into the MPC cost function, in order to permit a single MPC formulation and a receding horizon implementation. The control algorithm takes advantages of a relative motion parametrization for which the set of the equilibrium states represent the set of periodic orbits to prove the stability of the hovering zone and to enlarge significantly the domain of attraction. Several simulation results show that, in addition, performances in terms of convergence and fuel consumption are improved in comparison with previous works