Spacecraft Rendezvous and Departure in a Debris Field Using Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Tracking and Receding-Horizon Control

A theoretical spacecraft rendezvous operation is formulated in which an approaching craft must track a debris field and navigate through it to dock with a target that may be uncontrolled and/or uncommunicative. Due to the uncontrolled nature of the target craft, features on it must be tracked such that the rendezvousing craft can estimate its relative attitude and rotation rate, all while also tracking the position and velocity of the target craft. Random finite set-based multi-object tracking filters are used for debris and feature tracking. The feature tracking filter is coupled with a sequential extended Kalman filter to obtain attitude estimates and constrain the feature tracking. Additionally, a receding-horizon extended linear quadratic regulator is used with specially designed cost functions to generate velocity commands to safely navigate through the debris and to a specified rendezvous vector on the target craft by predicting future locations based on estimated values. The overall mission is divided into three phases that occur sequentially, where the second and third phases begin from the final state of the first phase.