Influence of Three-Body Gravitational Perturbation for Drag-Free Spacecraft

Abstract

This paper mainly studies the motion and control of the drag-free spacecraft system for a high-precision mission. In high-precision missions, the influence of three-body gravitational perturbation on a drag-free spacecraft system is still lack of relevant research. To this end, we first established a relative motion model of the test mass and the spacecraft based on multibody dynamics, and the equations of the relative motion of the test mass and the spacecraft cavity were obtained through coordinate transformation. The difference between the sun orbit and the Earth orbit is comparatively analyzed by a numerical solution. The influence of gravitational forces from the Earth, the moon, and the sun on the relative motion is studied in detail. Secondly, a sliding mode controller is designed for the high-precision mission. Finally, the performance of the controller is analyzed from the time domain and the frequency domain. Numerical simulation results show that the controller can meet the requirements of the time domain and the frequency domain.