OPTIMAL SIMULTANEOUS 6 AXIS COMMAND OF A SPACE VEHICLE WITH A PRECOMPUTED THRUSTER SELECTION CATALOGUE TABLE

摘要

An efficient on board algorithm is presented determining the optimal jet selection and firing duration for the 6 degrees of freedom command of a space vehicle controlled by fixed thrusters. This method involves a precomputed fixed catalogue table of jet selection and inverse command matrix data preloaded in the flight software not depending on the center of mass. The method applied for the thrusters command in RV of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) features a reduced on board power processing demand, a feasible table memory size and nice deterministic characteristics for the vehicle design.