Manipulating Tumbling Spacecraft by Hall Thruster

Stabilizing tumbling failed spacecraft is a critical foundational stage in on-orbit servicing. The contactless exhaust-plume-based manipulation offers flexible maneuverability and avoids mechanical collisions, but its practical application is impeded by high energy consumption and computationally expensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based computations (∼10⁵ degree of freedoms (DOFs) model in seconds). Here, we propose a contactless plasma-plume-based manipulation method by employing the commonly equipped Hall thruster, leveraging its high energy conversion rate and long-term accumulation of weak Hall impact effects. For computing efficiency, we establish a lightweight impact force model, based on the experimental data with particle physics theory as a model correction, to reduce computation time by over 10⁴ with an acceptable 4% accuracy loss. Through designing high-precision wire-suspension experiments in a vacuum chamber, we successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed manipulation method. In addition, we design and benchmark an optimal guidance law for a more general tumbling target with different parameters. Simulations show that the present method is capable of manipulating a target satellite weighing hundreds of kilograms in hours. This Hall plume manipulation approach opens new avenues in efficiently and safely controlling spacecraft in tumbling motion.