Model Predictive Control of three dimensional spacecraft relative motion

This paper further develops an approach for spacecraft relative motion control based on the application of linear quadratic Model Predictive Control (MPC) with dynamically reconfigurable constraints. Previous results for maneuvers confined to the orbital plane are extended to three dimensional maneuvers with three dimensional Line-of-Sight (LoS) constraint handling. The MPC controller is designed to prescribe Δv impulsive velocity changes rather than piecewise constant thrust profiles. The ability to transition between MPC guidance in the spacecraft rendezvous phase and MPC guidance in the spacecraft docking phase, with requirements, constraints, and sampling rates specific to each phase, is demonstrated. Bandwidth constraints of the spacecraft attitude control system and exhaust plume direction constraints are also addressed. The MPC controller is validated on the full nonlinear model of spacecraft orbital motion and augmented with an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate spacecraft states based on relative angles and relative range measurements.