Model Predictive Control of Hayabusa2 Probe in the Approach Phase to an Asteroid

A new asteroid exploration spacecraft “Hayabusa2” as a follow on of “Hayabusa” is now in the course of production and experiment in order to launch in 2014. The touchdown of Hayabusa2 can be split into two phases, i.e., the approach phase and the final descent phase. In the approach phase, the spacecraft is guided and controlled by based on the command from the ground station. In contrast, the spacecraft controls its position and attitude by based on the autonomous computation in the final descent phase. This paper presents the application of the Model Predictive Control (MPC) to the approach phase to the asteroid, and verifies the performance and feasibility of this control algorithm through numerical simulations.