Electric Thrusters Redundancy Configuration Strategy Study for All Electric Propulsion Platform Station-Keeping

Electric propulsion is used for all electric propulsion satellites to perform the orbit transfer,attitude control and station-keeping tasks. Generally electric propulsion subsystem contains 4 thrusters. But if one thruster fails in the beginning of satellite lifetime,other thrusters will undertake all the firing tasks. The firing time will be 2 to 3 times of thrusters without failure. Thus it may go beyond the allow ed lifetime of thruster. This paper puts forward two thruster redundancy configuration solutions with 6 thrusters to solve this problem. Two layout configurations and their corresponding station-keeping strategies are simulated and compared. The results show that the maximum firing time of both layout configurations can meet the lifetime limitation. This solution is a good reference for all electric propulsion satellites design.

A station-keeping strategy for collinear libration point orbits

Spacecrafts in periodic or quasi-periodic orbits near the collinear libration points are proved to be excellent platforms for scientific investigations of various phenomena.Since such periodic or quasi-periodic orbits are exponentially unstable,the station-keeping maneuver is needed. A station-keeping strategy which is found by an analytical method is presented to eradicate the dominant unstable component of the libration point trajectories.The inhibit force transforms the unstable component to a stable component.In this method,it is not necessary to determine a nominal orbit as a reference path.

A high-order target phase approach for the station-keeping of periodic orbits

A novel high-order target phase approach(TPhA)for the station-keeping of periodic orbits is proposed in this work.The key elements of the TPhA method,the phase-angle Poincare map and high-order maneuver map,are constructed using differential algebra(DA)techniques to determine station-keeping epochs and calculate correction maneuvers.A stochastic optimization framework tailored for the TPhA-based station-keeping process is leveraged to search for fuel-optimal and error-robust TPhA parameters.Quasi-satellite orbits(QSOs)around Phobos are investigated to demonstrate the efficacy of TPhA in mutli-fidelity dynamical models.Monte Carlo simulations demonstrated that the baseline QSO of JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration(MMX)mission could be maintained with a monthly maneuver budget of approximately 1 m/s.

Nonlinear dynamics and station-keeping control of a rotating tethered satellite system in halo orbits

The dynamics of a rotating tethered satellite system （TSS） in the vicinity of libration points are highly nonlinear and inherently unstable. In order to fulfill the station-keep control of the rotating TSS along halo orbits, a nonlinear output tracking control scheme based on the θ- D technique is proposed. Compared with the popular time-variant linear quadratic regulator （LQR） controller, this approach overcomes some limitations such as on-line computations of the algebraic Riccati equation. Besides, the obtained nonlinear suboptimal controller is in a closed form and easy to implement. Numerical simulations show that the TTS trajectories track the periodic reference orbit with low energy consumption in the presence of both tether and initial injection errors. The axis of rotation can keep pointing to an inertial specific object to fulfill an observation mission. In addition, the thrusts required by the controller are in an acceptable range and can be implemented through some low-thrust propulsion devices.

Efficient high-accuracy north-south station-keeping strategy for geostationary satellites

Station-keeping(SK) is indispensable in actual geostationary(GEO) satellite missions. Due to the luni-solar gravity perturbations, the inclination of a GEO satellite suffers the issues of secular drift and long-period oscillation. Current north-south(NS)SK strategies maintain the GEO satellite’s orbit with high accuracy but low fuel efficiency. In this work, an efficient highaccuracy NS-SK strategy is developed for the GEO satellites. First, an averaging method is employed to decrease the accumulation of the secular drift within a one-solar-day SK cycle, while the long-period oscillation caused by the solar gravity is damped to further improve the orbital accuracy using the impulse and finite-thrust propulsions. Second, we contribute a fueloptimal cycle that reduces the fuel consumption and a fixed-interval cycle that executes SK control in fixed time interval every day to further enhance the proposed NS-SK strategy. Numerical simulations show that the improved strategy can achieve highaccuracy NS-SK with little fuel consumption. Moreover, results also demonstrate that the fixed-interval cycle can reach higher NS-SK accuracy while consuming less fuel.

Station-keeping control for a stratosphere airship via wind speed prediction approach

Purpose–The purpose of this paper is to improve the control precision of the station-keeping control for a stratosphere airship through the feedforward-feedback PID controller which is designed by the wind speed prediction based on the incremental extreme learning machine(I-ELM).Design/methodology/approach–First of all,the online prediction of wind speed is implemented by the I-ELM with rolling time.Second,the feedforward-feedback PID controller is designed through the position information of the airship and the predicted wind speed.In the end,the one-dimensional dynamic model of the stratosphere airship is built,and the controller is applied in the numerical simulation.Findings–Based on the conducted numerical simulations,some valuable conclusions are obtained.First,through the comparison between the predicted value and true value of the wind speed,the wind speed prediction based on I-ELM is very accurate.Second,the feedforward-feedback PID controller designed in this paper is very effective.Originality/value–This paper is very valuable to the research of a high-accuracy station-keeping control of stratosphere airship.

Hayabusa2’s station-keeping operation in the proximity of the asteroid Ryugu

The Japanese interplanetary probe Hayabusa2 was launched on December 3,2014 and the probe arrived at the vicinity of asteroid 162173 Ryugu on June 27,2018.During its 1.4 years of asteroid proximity phase,the probe successfully accomplished numbers of record-breaking achievements including two touchdowns and one artificial cratering experiment,which are highly expected to have secured surface and subsurface samples from the asteroid inside its sample container for the first time in history.The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was designed not to orbit but to hover above the asteroid along the sub Earth line.This orbital and geometrical configuration allows the spacecraft to utilize its high-gain antennas for telecommunication with the ground station on Earth while pointing its scientific observation and navigation sensors at the asteroid.This paper focuses on the regular station-keeping operation of Hayabusa2,which is called“home position”(HP)-keeping operation.First,together with the spacecraft design,an operation scheme called HP navigation(HPNAV),which includes a daily trajectory control and scientific observations as regular activities,is introduced.Following the description on the guidance,navigation,and control design as well as the framework of optical and radiometric navigation,the results of the HP-keeping operation including trajectory estimation and delta-V planning during the entire asteroid proximity phase are summarized and evaluated as a first report.Consequently,this paper states that the HP.keeping operation in the framework of HPNAV had succeeded without critical incidents,and the number of trajectory control delta-V was planned fficiently throughout the period.

Coupled trajectory and attitude stability of displaced orbits

Coupled trajectory and attitude stability of displaced solar orbits is studied by using sailcraft with a kind of two-folding construction with two unequal rectangular plates forming a right angle. Three-dimensional coupled trajectory and attitude equations are developed for the coupled dynamical system, and the results show that all three types of displaced solar orbits widely referenced can be achieved through selecting an appropriate size of the two-folding sail. An anal- ysis of the corresponding linear stability of the trajectory and attitude coupled system is carried out, and both trajectory and attitude linearly stable orbits are found to exist in a small range of parameters, whose non-linear stability is then examined via numerical simulations. Finally, passively stable orbits are found to have weak stability, and such passive means of station-keeping are attractive and useful in practice because of its simplicity.