Thruster failures historically account for a large percentage of failures that have occurred on orbit. These failures are typically handled through redundancy, however, with the push to using smaller, less expensive satellites in clusters or formations there is a need to perform thruster failure recovery without additional hardware. This means that a thruster failure may cause the spacecraft to become underactuated, requiring more advanced control techniques. A model of a thruster-controlled spacecraft is developed and analyzed with a nonlinear controllability test, highlighting several challenges including coupling, nonlinearities, severe control input saturation, and nonholonomicity. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is proposed as a control technique to solve these challenges. However, the real-time, online implementation of MPC brings about many issues. A method of performing MPC online is described, implemented and tested in simulation as well as in hardware on the Synchronized Position-Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) testbed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and on the International Space Station (ISS). These results show that MPC provided improved performance over a simple path planning technique.
Autonomous thruster failure recovery on underactuated spacecraft using model predictive control
2011
Pong, Christopher M., Alvar Saenz-Otero and David W. Miller. "Autonomous thruster failure recovery on underactuated spacecraft using model predictive control." In Guidance and Control 2011: Proceedings of the 34th Annual AAS Rocky Mountain Section Guidance and Control Conference, February 4-9, 2011, Breckenridge, Colorado, Univelt, Inc. pp. 107-126. (Advances in the astronautical sciences; v. 141)
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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