A novel nonlinear guidance scheme for power-limited autonomous rendezvous with fixed docking direction and collision avoidance constranits

This paper solves the problem of optimal guidance scheme of a powered chaser and a passive target in a highly elliptical orbit. The Tschauner-Hempel equations are derived to describe the relative motion. Then, the rendezvous problems are explicitly formulated as an online trajectory planning problem by using the proposed method. Furthermore, the limitation of thruster activation is considered. Meanwhile, in order to fully demonstrate the performance of the guidance algorithm, the effects of eccentricity and prediction horizon on the time consumption and control expenditure is studied. Finally, simulations are implemented with different scenarios by using Matlab, and the results illustrate this method can deal with both circular and elliptical case, which can be used to generate the fuel-optimal trajectory on-line rapidly.