Optimal design of near-Earth asteroid sample-return trajectories in the Sun–Earth–Moon system

In the 6th edition of the Chinese Space Trajectory Design Competition held in 2014, a near-Earth asteroid sample-return trajectory design problem was released, in which the motion of the spacecraft is modeled in multi-body dynamics, considering the gravitational forces of the Sun, Earth, and Moon. It is proposed that an electric-propulsion spacecraft initially parking in a circular 200-kin-altitude low Earth orbit is expected to rendezvous with an asteroid and carry as much sample as possible back to the Earth in a 10-year time frame. The team from the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported a solution with an asteroid sample mass of 328 tons, which is ranked first in the competition. In this article, we will present our design and optimization methods, primarily including overall analysis, target selection, escape from and capture by the Earth-Moon system, and optimization of impulsive and low-thrust trajectories that are modeled in multi-body dynamics. The orbital resonance concept and lunar gravity assists are considered key techniques employed for trajectory design. The reported solution, preliminarily revealing the feasibility of returning a hundreds-of-tons asteroid or asteroid sample, envisions future space missions relating to near-Earth asteroid exploration.

Study of highly excited vibrational dynamics of HCP integrable system with dynamic potential methods

Highly excited vibrational dynamics of phosphaethyne(HCP)integrable system are investigated based on its dynamic potentials.Taking into consideration the 2:1 Fermi resonance between H–C–P bending vibrational mode and C–P stretching vibrational mode,it is found that the effects of H–C stretching vibrational mode on vibrational dynamic features of the HCP integrable system are significant and regularly vary with Polyad numbers(P number).The geometrical profiles of the dynamic potentials and the corresponding fixed points are sensitive to the variation of H–C stretching vibrational strength when P numbers are small,but are not sensitive when P numbers become larger and the corresponding threshold values become lower.The phase space trajectories of different energy levels in a designated dynamic potential(P=28)were studied and the results indicated that the dynamic potentials govern the various dynamic environments in which the vibrational states lie.Furthermore,action integrals of the energy levels contained in dynamic potential(P=28)were quantitatively analyzed and elucidated.It was determined that the dynamic environments could be identified by the numerical values of the action integrals of trajectories of phase space,which is equivalent with dynamic potentials.

Fuzzy adaptive robust control for space robot considering the effect of the gravity

Space robot is assembled and tested in gravity environment, and completes on-orbit service（OOS） in microgravity environment. The kinematic and dynamic characteristic of the robot will change with the variations of gravity in different working condition. Fully considering the change of kinematic and dynamic models caused by the change of gravity environment, a fuzzy adaptive robust control（FARC） strategy which is adaptive to these model variations is put forward for trajectory tracking control of space robot. A fuzzy algorithm is employed to approximate the nonlinear uncertainties in the model, adaptive laws of the parameters are constructed, and the approximation error is compensated by using a robust control algorithm. The stability of the control system is guaranteed based on the Lyapunov theory and the trajectory tracking control simulation is performed. The simulation results are compared with the proportional plus derivative（PD） controller, and the effectiveness to achieve better trajectory tracking performance under different gravity environment without changing the control parameters and the advantage of the proposed controller are verified.