Robust Rendezvous Planning Under Maneuver Execution Errors

Abstract : The problem of designing rendezvous guidance maneuver plan robust to thrusting errors is addressed in this paper. The aim of this paper is to develop tractable and robust guidance algorithms. Solving the rendezvous guidance problem via a direct approach leads to uncertain optimization problems while accounting for the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) systems uncertainties and errors. A worst-case ap-proach is considered in order to obtain tractable robust counterparts. The robustness certificates derived from these guidance algorithm provide the means to analyze the effects of the considered errors on the rendezvous mission. Several types of missions tested in a linear environment are used to illustrate the methodology.