Libration point orbit rendezvous in real earth-moon system using terminal sliding mode control

This paper studies the problem of libration point orbit rendezvous using terminal sliding mode control. The underlying dynamics are the full nonlinear equations of motion in a complete Solar System model, taking into account all the gravitational forces from the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, whose positions are computed using the JPL DE405 ephemeris. The prominent advantage of terminal sliding mode control, owing to the specific design of the sliding surface, is that the time of convergence can be prescribed a priori, which means the rendezvous time is fully under control. Besides the sliding surface design, a controller suited to the dynamical model is also derived to insure the global stabilization of the approach. Preliminary results validate the availability of the approach, and comparisons are made with the results obtained using glideslope guidance in previous work.