The spacecraft electromagnetic docking technique has distinct advantages, which could enable soft docking for more-frequent on-orbit servicing missions. When electromagnets are used, two kinds of magnetic torque exist: one due to the electromagnet and the other due to the Earth’s magnetic field. These affect the attitude motion, which may results in angular-momentum saturation and attitude control-system failure. In this paper, based on the requirements of relative trajectory control, an effective and robust angular-momentum management approach is proposed to mediate the effects caused by these two kinds of magnetic torque. This approach, including two operating modes: a “normal mode” and an “angular-momentum-reduction mode”, uses the Earth’s magnetic field to counteract the effect of inter-satellite electromagnetic torque and applies the extended state observer to estimate the combined disturbance for feedback control. The angular-momentum management of three spacecraft docking scenarios ( V -bar, R -bar, and H -bar) are studied, and the resulting magnetic-moment solutions are also given. At last, some simulation results are presented to validate the feasibility of this proposed robust angular-momentum management approach, and several useful conclusions follow.


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    Title :

    Angular-Momentum Management of Spacecraft Electromagnetic Docking Considering the Earth’s Magnetic Field


    Contributors:
    Zhang, Yuan-wen (author) / Yang, Le-ping (author) / Zhu, Yan-wei (author) / Huang, Huan (author) / Cai, Wei-wei (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2013-02-21


    Size :

    10 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English






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