Nonlinear Model Predictive Control of Coupled Celestial System

A method for controlling a spacecraft to rendezvous a non-center-of-mass point of the controlled spacecraft with a non-center-of-mass point of an uncontrolled celestial body, wherein the controlled spacecraft and the uncontrolled celestial body form a multi-object celestial system, wherein the method uses a processor coupled with stored instructions implementing the method, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor carry out steps of the method, comprising:

• accepting data indicative of current values of states of the controlled spacecraft and the uncontrolled celestial body in the multi-object celestial system, wherein the states includes one or combination of positions, orientations, and translational and angular velocities of the controlled spacecraft and the uncontrolled celestial body, and perturbations acting on the multi-object celestial system;
• producing control commands to thrusters of the controlled spacecraft using a non-linear model predictive control (NMPC) optimizing a cost function over a receding horizon that minimizes an error between coordinates of the non-center-of-mass point of the spacecraft and the non-center-of-mass point of the celestial body subject to joint dynamics of the multi-object celestial system coupled with joint kinematics of the multi-object celestial system;
• and
• submitting the control commands to the thrusters of the spacecraft.