"Libration control of bare electrodynamic tether for three-dimensional " by Caoqun Luo, Hao Wen et al.

Article Title

Libration control of bare electrodynamic tether for three-dimensional deployment

Authors

Caoqun Luo, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Hao Wen, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Dongping Jin, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,

Keywords

bare electrodynamic, tether, deployment, three-dimensional, libration, control

Abstract

Various promising applications of electrodynamic tether have been proposed for space missionsover the past decades. A crucial issue of these missions is to deploy an electrodynamictether under a rapid and stable state. This paper aims to stabilize the libration motions of abare electrodynamic tether during its three-dimensional deployment. The tethered systemunder consideration consists of a main-satellite and a sub-satellite connected to each otherthrough a bare electrodynamic tether. A widely used dumbbell assumption considering thetether as rigid and inflexible is adopted to facilitate the dynamic modeling and analysisof the tethered system. A pair of active control laws is synthesized by simultaneouslyregulating the electric current and tether tension to achieve an efficient stabilization of thethree-dimensional libration of the bare electrodynamic tether in the deployment process.Moreover, comparisons of three groups of numerical simulations are performed to evaluatethe influences of orbital inclinations and geomagnetic field models and the performance ofthe active control laws.