Control systems assignment
SPACECRAFT ORBITAL MANOEUVRING
Submitted by-
Saranga Bora
Roll no. 1601047
ECE department
Introduction: A spacecraft orbital manoeuvrer is the use of a
method to accelerate spacecrafts and artificial satellites to change
its orbit. spacecraft seldom stays very long in its assigned orbit.
On nearly every space mission, there’s a need to change one or
more of the classic orbital elements at least once. For instance,
communication satellites never go directly into their geostationary
positions. They first go into a low-perigee (300 km or so) “parking
orbit” before transferring to geosynchronous altitude (about
35,780 km). While this large change in semimajor axis occurs,
another maneuver reduces their inclinations from that of the
parking orbit to 0°. Even after they arrive at their mission orbit,
they regularly have to adjust it to stay in place.
These orbital maneuvers are not very simple. Because a spacecraft
is always in the gravitational field of some central body (such as
Earth or the Sun or other planetary objects), it has to follow
orbital-motion laws in getting from one place to another.
Impact on society and present status: We get to explore and know
more about the outer space and universe by sending spacecrafts.
Spacecrafts and satellites are used for observation of the earth.
Satellites are spacecrafts used for communication across various
parts of the world. Spacecrafts are also used for many other
purposes such as meteorology, navigation, space colonization,
planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo.
The first ship to safely put a man in space and orbit the earth was
Vostok 1, piloted by Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Numerous spacecrafts
have been launched on various purposes till date.
A simple idea of the mechanism used in spacecraft orbital
maneuvering: The spacecraft can accelerate or decelerate in space
using gravity assist of the planets. When an engine burn is
executed at a precise location of its orbit, and is correctly timed
with an approaching planet, the other end of the spacecraft’s orbit
changes in shape, thus intersecting the orbit of the planet. This
method is known as “Hohmann transfer method”. The
gravitational field of this planet can be used to slingshot around it
(which is known as “gravity assist”) to increase its speed relative
to the sun. Now if the spacecraft approaches the planet along the
direction of motion of the planet, the velocity of the spacecraft
will increase. If the spacecraft approaches the planet along the
direction opposite to the motion of the planet, the velocity of the
spacecraft will decrease. Depending upon how it approaches the
planet, its course can be changed dramatically and can even leave
travelling in the opposite direction.
Problem statement: The spacecraft gains velocity as it approaches
the planet or the planetary object on which we want to land it. And
therefore, we need to decelerate the spacecraft before landing.
Also, the spacecraft may face many unexpected perturbations
in its path, which may lead in the spacecraft to change its
precalculated trajectories.
An outline of the solution: So, here comes the use of control
systems. Now to tackle both of these above stated problems, we
may use a feedback control system. Traditionally, spacecraft orbits
are controlled by engineers on the ground, who command the
spacecraft to perform thrust profiles designed to force optimal
maneuver trajectories. Linear feedback control is used primarily to
counter unexpected perturbations, and maintain precalculated
optimal trajectories. We develop nonlinear feedback control
algorithms to autonomously maneuver and maintain spacecraft
formations, without the use of computationally expensive
optimization techniques. These control laws should be applicable
to real satellites, and therefore must work in the presence of
constraints such as thrust magnitude and direction limitations.
They should also seek to minimize fuel consumption, both of the
individual formation flyers, and of the formation as a whole. The
formation flying strategies should cover issues including the
definition of reference, or target trajectories, and the definition of
appropriate nonlinear feedback control gains. Intuitively, the use
of nonlinear control in place of linear control should result in
significant fuel savings. This savings should be particularly
evident when feedback control is used to perform large
maneuvers, where the nonlinear dynamics effects become
pronounced.
Mathematical formulations:
The dynamics of space objects is most often described by two-
body motion in a Keplerian gravitational field, with corrections to
compensate for forces from perturbations such as nonspheroidal
central body effects, atmospheric drag, solar and lunar
gravitational effects, and solar radiation pressure. In this section,
we present a brief description of Keplerian orbits, and the effect of
some perturbations on formation dynamics. A discussion of some
formation flying concepts, including formation models and
formation master orbit definitions is presented here. In cartesian
form, the equations of motion for a point-mass satellite take the
form
where r is the position vector of the satellite measured from the
center of mass of the primary body, µ is the gravitational
parameter of that body, and ap includes perturbation accelerations
caused by non-spheroidal gravitational effects of the central body,
atmospheric drag, third body effects and so on. If ap = 0 then the
equations of motion reduce to the ideal Keplerian situation where
the central body is a perfect sphere and all other disturbances are
zero. We can also express the motion of a point-mass satellite in
terms of orbital elements. We define the classical orbital elements,
as the semi-major axis, a, the eccentricity, e, the inclination, i, the
right ascension of the ascending node, Ω, the argument of
periapse, ω, and the mean anomaly, M. We also need to refer to
the true anomaly, ν, and the argument of latitude, θ=ω+ν. The
equations of motion of a controlled spacecraft in terms of the
classical orbital element set are given by Gauss’s form of
Lagrange’s planetary equations:
where ur, uθ, and uh are the radial, transverse, and orbit normal
control, or disturbance acceleration components, n is the mean
motion, and p, h, and b are the semi-latus rectum, the angular
momentum, and the semi-minor axis, respectively.
Perturbation Effects: Whereas orbital perturbations have a
significant impact on the absolute motion of individual spacecraft,
the effect of perturbations on the relative motion of formation
flying spacecraft can be quite limited. For formations in Earth
orbit, the two most significant perturbations are Earth oblateness
effects, and atmospheric drag effects. For formations of identical
spacecraft (equal size and mass), the differential drag effect is
negligible, and the most significant perturbation to the formation
geometry is the differential J2 effect. Earth oblateness causes
regression of the node, or rotation of the orbit about the inertial ˆi3
vector, as well as secular rotation of the orbit about the orbit
normal vector. The secular drifts of Ω, ω, and M due to J2
perturbations are:
where r⊕ is the radius of the Earth. Notice that the secular drift due
to J2 effects varies with inclination. Formations of spacecraft with
no inclination variation will drift as a group, experiencing no
relative deformation. Formations with inclination variations
encounter differential secular drift, which must be mitigated to
maintain the formation geometry.
Lyapunov Control Law: Whereas linear control techniques can be
highly effective in the control of nonlinear systems, nonlinear
control strategies can be beneficial in a variety of ways. For
example, nonlinear controllers may: a) increase the region of state
space in which we can effectively control the system, b) improve
control robustness to parametric uncertainty, c) obtain truer
optimality results, d) enable control of systems which are not
linearly controllable, and e) allow us to preserve and exploit
physical insight. In this section we develop nonlinear, Lyapunov-
based classical element feedback control for spacecraft orbital
maneuvers. The first part of this control law establishes the
desired orbital plane. The second part, which we call “mean
motion control,” takes advantage of the natural relative dynamics
to control spacecraft position within the orbit.
Classical Orbital Element Control: The equations of motion (2 –
7) can be written as:
(11)
where œ is the vector of orbital elements, [ a e i Ω ω M ]T ,
and u is the vector of controls, [ ur uθ uh ]T .
We separate these equations of motion into two systems: one
system consisting of the first five elements, which define the
shape, size, and orientation of the orbit, and the second system
consisting of the in-plane angular position of the spacecraft.
For the first system, we define the error η as
(12)
where (·)∗ is the target element.
The equations of motion for this system are:
η˙ = Gu (13)
where the input matrix, G, from Eqs. (2–7), is
(14)
where the sine and cosine functions are abbreviated as s(·) and
c(·).
A candidate Lyapunov function for this system is
V(η) = (1/2) ηTη (15)
whose time derivative is given by
V˙(η) = ηTη˙ = ηTG(η)u (16)
Choosing the control, u, as
u = −GTKη (17)
where K is a positive definite gain matrix, results in
V˙ = −ηTGGTKη ≤ 0 (18)
The time derivative of the Lyapunov function is negative
semi-definite. To prove asymptotic stability, we apply LaSalle’s
invariance theorem. The time derivative of the Lyapunov function
is always zero when η = 0, and could be zero when the
trigonometric functions of θ = ω + ν are zero, which occurs when
θ = kπ/2, where k is an integer. The set where θ = kπ/2 is not an
invariant set, because θ is time-varying and therefore trajectories
that start in the set do not remain in the set. Therefore, the largest
invariant set where V˙ = 0 is the set η = 0. So by LaSalle’s
invariance principle, the system is asymptotically stable under the
choice of control given in Eq. (29). Furthermore, the system is
globally asymptotically stable because V → ∞ as |η| → ∞.
Choosing a diagonal, positive definite gain matrix, K, the
control law from Eq. (17) is:
(19)
The angle errors δΩ, δω, and δM are measured from parameters
defined between 0 and 2π. To ensure proper error feedback, these
angular errors should be “short-way” angle measurements, defined
between −π and π.
Control Application Issues: To apply the control laws developed,
we must first address some control application issues. Real
spacecraft have numerous constraints limiting the application of
thrust. It is not always possible for thrusters to deliver the exact
magnitude and direction of thrust requested by the control law. In
this section, the impact of constrained thrust magnitude and
direction on control law design, as well as a method for choosing
appropriate gains for the nonlinear control is described.
Constrained Thrust Magnitude: Since most spacecraft have fixed
magnitude thrusters, we must develop some way of discretizing
the control acceleration requested by the control laws. For
example, if the orbital element feedback control law requests
acceleration of magnitude A in the αˆ direction, we must determine
whether or not to thrust, and if so, in what direction. This decision
is straightforward for this elemental control law, as we have full
scaling freedom in the choice of gains. We simply calculate a
desired thrust direction and magnitude from the control law, and
thrust if and only if the desired thrust magnitude is greater than the
available thrust magnitude. Mathematically, the thruster on/off
logic requests thrust in the αˆ direction if and only if A > T/m
where T is the available thrust magnitude, and m is the spacecraft
mass.
Constrained Thrust Direction: In the case of the HokieSat mission,
we must not only scale the thrust magnitude, but also constrain the
thrust direction. HokieSat’s orbit control consists of four pulsed
plasma thrusters (PPTs ) aligned in the local horizontal frame,
with no thrust available in the radial direction.
The classical feedback control laws can be modified to
exclude radial thrusting by setting the terms in the first column of
the G matrix in the control definition to zero, thus requesting only
transverse and orbit normal thrust.
Circular Orbits: While the equinoctial control law presented in
avoids the singularities associated with circular and equatorial
orbits, the lack of physical meaning makes the equinoctial
elements difficult to visualize. In the case of circular orbits, the
argument of periapse and the mean anomaly are undefined, and
singularities appear in the classical element equations of motion of
those variables. We can modify the classical orbital element
Lyapunov control to deal with these issues by: 1) setting the gain
Kω to zero so that the errors associated with that gain do not
contribute to the total requested thrust; 2) using the argument of
latitude error, δθ, in place of δM in the mean motion control.
These modifications are acceptable as long as the eccentricity
error remains small, so that δθ is a good approximation of the in-
plane-angle error.
Modification:
Gain selection:Intuitively, nonlinear control of formation flying
spacecraft should provide improvements over more traditional,
linear feedback control techniques such as LQR and H∞. One
major obstacle in the use of nonlinear controls such as the
Lyapunov-based control is the lack of a well-defined method for
choosing gains. Whereas numerous tools exist for gain selection
for linear feedback control methodologies, nonlinear gain
selection techniques are often limited to trial-and-error type
approaches. In the full state feedback problem, the orbital element
feedback control laws require a [6 x 6] gain matrix. Even using
only the diagonal terms, we are unlikely to find six effective gains
using a trial-and-error approach. To motivate a more effective gain
selection process for the full-state feedback problem, we explore
the use of the nonlinear control laws in more limited control
problems. The orbital element Lyapunov control law can be used
to control specific elements, by setting the gains corresponding to
the uncontrolled elements to zero. For example, the Lyapunov
orbit control law can be used to perform a circle-to-circle orbit-
raising maneuver using feedback of the semi-major axis error, δa,
and the eccentricity error, δe.
References:
1) Maneuvering in space pdf:
(https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aa
m/cami/library/online_libraries/aerospace_medicine/tutorial/media/III.4.1
.5_Maneuvering_in_Space.pdf)
2) Wikipaedia : Orbital maneuver
3) Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnxt1YPWbk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wIrKOYMyNg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJmD_1kSa3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16jr7WWGSxo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WsuNSuIhG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qEqXurSV1s&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMj4Uh3x7u8&t=23s
