Dynamics and Control for Eddy Braking a Space Tumbling target

As the increase of space exploration, more and more space projects are carried out every year resulting in the increasing of space debris population. Active debris removal (ADR) is becoming increasingly important to remove those objects in orbit, like rocket bodies and invalid satellites. But existing ADR methods which need physical contact can't handle the scene where the target has highly angular velocity. Therefore, a de-tumbling process before capturing become indispensable. The goal of this paper is to study the dynamic and control of a novel contactless method called 'eddy brake' method. This paper concentrates on a general dynamics and control problem between the target and chaser. A general dynamics model is proposed, and the state space equations are formulated. The contactless eddy braking control low is designed using nonlinear integral SMC. Numerical simulation validates the feasibility of eddy braking method and the efficiency of nonlinear integral SMC for maintaining the target relative state and de-tumbling the target.