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Published March 2014 | public
Journal Article

Trajectory Planning for CubeSat Short-Time-Scale Proximity Operations

Abstract

This paper considers motion planning for small satellites such as CubeSats performing proximity operations in a several meters range of a target object. The main goal is to develop a principled methodology for handling the coupled effects of orbital dynamics, rotational and translational rigid-body dynamics, underactuation and control bounds, and obstacle avoidance constraints. The proposed approach is based on constructing a reduced-order parameterization of the dynamics through dynamics inversion and differential flatness, and on efficient global optimization over a finite-dimensional reduced representation. Two simulated scenarios, a satellite reconfiguration maneuver and asteroid surface sampling, are developed to illustrate the approach. In addition, a simple two-dimensional experimental testbed consisting of an air-bearing table and two CubeSat engineering models is developed for partial testing and integration of the proposed methods.

Additional Information

© 2013 by Marin Kobilarov and Sergio Pellegrino. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission. Received 9 September 2012; revision received 5 March 2013; accepted for publication 13 April 2013; published online 13 February 2014. Financial support from the Keck Institute for Space Studies is gratefully acknowledged. Keith Patterson (Caltech) and Professor Craig Underwood (University of Surrey) are thanked for providing help and advice in setting up the experiment.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023