Control laws for orbital parameters of rigid satellite system considering nonholonomic constraint

This study deals with orbital control of a rigid coplanar dumbbell-type satellite system. While most of the previous work for orbital transfer aim at changing just one parameter of the orbital elements, by applying a nonlinear method, this study proposes two control laws to change an orbit into a prescribed one defined by its orbital elements: semi-major axis (equivalent to semilatus rectum), eccentricity and argument of pericenter. First controller is developed from a two-step approach combining a solution for a chained formed system and numerical modification based on motion planning. Another is a feedback controller, which can compensate model uncertainty or disturbance. These two controllers can be combined to a complementary control technique. The effectiveness of the proposed control laws are demonstrated through a series of numerical simulations.