Adaptive attitude-tracking control of spacecraft considering on-orbit refuelling

Abstract

This paper studies the attitude-tracking control problem of spacecraft considering on-orbit refuelling. A time-varying inertia model is developed for spacecraft on-orbit refuelling, which actually includes two processes: fuel in the transfer pipe and fuel in the tank. Based upon the inertia model, an adaptive attitude-tracking controller is derived to guarantee the stability of the resulted closed-loop system, as well as asymptotic convergence of the attitude-tracking errors, despite performing refuelling operations. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed control scheme.