Incremental model predictive control for satellite de-orbiting based on drag modulation

This paper deals with the problem of controlled atmospheric re-entry, which has recently gained growing interest from the aerospace scientific and industrial communities for the economic and environmental benefits related to the development of reusable space vehicles. In this context, an original technique based on the incremental formulation of the Model Predictive Control methodology is proposed to tackle the trajectory tracking problem of a small satellite equipped with a deployable heat shield in the de-orbiting phase, focusing on a range of altitude from 300 km to 130 km, i.e., before the atmosphere is dense enough to begin a terminal re-entry phase. The proposed control logic allows following a given pre-determined guidance law, limiting position offsets due to unmodelled disturbances or uncertainties in the knowledge of spacecraft parameters (e.g., drag coefficient). An extensive numerical simulation campaign to assess the control performances in different perturbing conditions has demonstrated its ability to reach a km-error level in the position error at the final altitude of 130 km.