Error analysis for rendezvous phasing orbital control using design of experiments

The errors affecting rendezvous phasing trajectory are coupled with each other when navigate–target–burn loop is employed. The main goal of this paper is to obtain the errors with the greatest influence and to evaluate the interaction between errors using design of experiments. Firstly, a maneuver strategy similar to that used by Space Shuttle is introduced and the errors are modeled according to the navigate–target–burn loop. Then, two experimental design methods, i.e. the one-factor-at-a-time design and the orthogonal design, are adopted to organize the numerical experiments. The one-factor-at-a-time design is used to screen the top five errors with obvious effect for each response, while the orthogonal design is applied to analyze the errors further with multiple factors considered simultaneously and to evaluate the interaction between errors. The errors with the greatest influence for each response are obtained, and the obvious interaction between the initial state errors and burn errors is uncovered.