Abstract: Failure spacecraft generally have complex motions and large angular velocities. Using a robotic arm to directly capture the target is likely to cause unexpected collisions. If the contact detumbling operation is first used to reduce the target angular velocity, it will greatly reduce the difficulty for the service satellite to capture the target. Aiming at the uncertainty problems in contact detumbling of rolling uncooperative space targets, this paper proposed an adaptive control method based on the characteristic model. First of all, the mechanism of contact detumbling is analyzed and a dynamic model of the system is established. Then the characteristic modeling of the contact detumbling system was performed and the range of characteristic parameters was obtained. Finally, the golden section adaptive controller was designed based on the model. The simulation results show that the method effectively overcomes the uncertainty of the detumbling contact collision model, and the detumbling process is fast with small residual angular velocity.

Key words: failure spacecraft, flexible brush, contact detumbling, characteristic model, golden section control