Evolvement laws of magnetic dipoles interaction and its application to spacecraft self- and soft-docking

Inter-craft electromagnetic proximity actuation has several potential advantages, such as no propellant consumption and no plume contamination, yet providing high-precision control capability of continuous, reversible, synchronous and non-contacting actuation. Given the initial inter-craft relative state, including position, attitude and corresponding velocities, there are some determined evolvement laws of magnetic dipoles interaction, which could be exploited to improve control precision and reduce the requirements of relative state measurement. This paper derives these evolvement laws and utilizes them in spacecraft self- and soft-docking controller design, and which are validated by several numerical simulations.