Control of chaos and its relevancy to spacecraft steering

Abstract

In 1990, a seminal work named controlling chaos showed that not only the chaotic evolution could be controlled, but also the complexity inherent in the chaotic dynamics could be exploited to provide a unique level of flexibility and efficiency in technological uses of this phenomenon. Control of chaos is also making substantial contribution in the field of astrodynamics, especially related to the exciting issue of low-energy transfer. The purpose of this work is to bring up the main ideas regarding the control of chaos and targeting, and to show how these techniques can be extended to Hamiltonian situations. We give realistic examples related to astrodynamics problems, in which these techniques are unique in terms of efficiency related to low-energy spacecraft transfer and in-orbit stabilization.