Autonomous Orbit Maintenance Law for LEO SunSynchronous, Earth Repeating Satellites with ElectricPropulsion System

摘要

A novel autonomous on board orbit maintenance law for LEO sun synchronous, Earth ground trace repeating, electric propelled satellites is developed in this paper. The law uses cascade control scheme. The internal controller changes the orbit by controlling the semi-major axis, eccentricity and inclination. The external controller changes the desired orbit for the inner control loop in a manner that keeps the ground trace (GT) and the local time of descending node (LTDN) within a specified tolerance. Two different approaches are developed for the outer controller, a tight control for use when a small tolerance is allowed and an "open loop" model based control for use otherwise.