Abstract: The adaptive control problem of twocraft Coulomb formation configuration keeping at geostationary orbit is investigated. the nonlinear relative kinetic model of the twocraft Coulomb formation at geostationary orbit is established. Based on the nonlinear dynamic model, considering the unmodeled disturbance force in space environment and the model error generated during the nonlinear dynamic model, an adaptive control law is designed. The numerical simulation is carried out, and the results are compared with the traditional PID control. The simulation results show that the proposed adaptive control law has fast response, good stability, and the formation configuration can converge to the expected one. The control performance is also proved to be better than PID control.

Key words: Coulomb formation, geostationary orbit, configuration keeping, adaptive control