Advisor: Dr. Sarah Li

Milestone: MS Thesis Proposal

Degree Program: Aerospace Engineering

Title: Distributed MPC for momentum counter-balanced and zero-impulse contact of a free-spinning satellite

Abstract: In on-orbit robotics, a servicer satellite's ability to make contact with a free-spinning target satellite is essential to completing most on-orbit servicing (OOS) tasks. A tumbling target satellite with angular momentum components across multiple body axes may require multiple servicer satellites contacting in different planes to achieve full detumble. This manuscript develops a cooperative distributed model predictive control (DMPC) framework that coordinates the maneuvers between multiple servicer satellite agents to achieve zero-impulse contact with a free-spinning target satellite. Each servicer internally runs a hierarchical MPC controller that coordinates between two separately actuated modules of the servicer satellite: (1) a moment generation module and (2) a manipulation module. The distributed outer layer coordinates across servicers by enforcing consensus on the shared target state. We analyze the computational complexity of the large-scale centralized optimization problem and the smaller-scale distributed subproblems independently and then analyze how the number of agents scales with computational complexity. We evaluate the performance of the DMPC framework by simulating multi-servicer zero-impulse contact scenarios with a free-spinning target satellite via numerical Monte Carlo (MC) trials and comparing the simulation results with the centralized MPC framework. We validate the multi-servicer contact scenario using MuJoCo to verify that the coordinated detumble maneuver satisfies zero-impulse contact constraints across all servicer-target contact points.

Date and time: 2026-04-23, 11:00 AM

Location: Montgomery Knight 317

Committee:
Dr. Sarah Li (advisor), School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Sarah Li, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Glen Chou, College of Computing and School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Panagiotis Tsiotras, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Koki Ho, School of Aerospace Engineering
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