Adaptive backstepping control for spacecraft rendezvous on elliptical orbits

This paper investigates the spacecraft rendezvous problem with the target spacecraft on an arbitrary elliptical orbit. The relative motion of two spacecrafts is established based on the Lawden equations. In order to take the model parameter uncertainty into consideration, an adaptive backstepping controller is designed by a Lyapunov approach. The proposed control laws can guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system and can estimate the uncertain model parameters at the same time. Finally, simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.