Abstract:

An approach for spacecraft autonomous rendezvous in an elliptical orbit without orbit information is developed. Lawden equation is used to describe the relative motion of two spacecrafts, and all the variable parameters in the equation are classified. With the assumption that the variable parameters are unavailable, a parameter estimate rule and an adaptive learning control law for autonomous rendezvous in the elliptical orbit are designed via Lyapunov methods. Simulation results indicate that the estimated parameters track the real parameters effectively. Meanwhile the adaptive learning control law can realize autonomous rendezvous in the elliptical orbit with relative state information only.

Key words: space rendezvous, Lyapunov methods, adaptive algorithms, learning algorithms, parameter estimation