Abstract: The guidance law for autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations requires the real-time guidance capability and excellent robustness. An iterative guidance methodology based on convex optimization with a target satellite in an arbitrary orbit was presented. Firstly, by the lossless simplification and convex processing to the dynamic model of relative motion, a convex optimization problem was formed, and its solution was proven to be equivalent to that of the original autonomous rendezvous problem. Secondly, after solving the convex optimization problem by the primal-dual interior point algorithm, an iterative guidance method was used to finish the onboard planning of the chaser vehicle. Numerical experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed guidance method.

Key words: Finite thrust, Optimal trajectory, Convex optimization, Iterative guidance, Autonomous rendezvous, Spacecraft