CEAS EuroGNC 2026
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Post-Capture Detumbling of Satellites: A Combined Robust INDI and MPC Approach
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| João T. Diz |
PhD Candidate/GNC Engineer, TU Delft/Indra Deimos, Control & Simulation/GNC Team, 2628 CD/1070-061, Delft/Lisbon, The Netherlands/Portugal. | | Afonso Botelho |
PhD Candidate, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal. Indra Deimos, Lisbon, Portugal. | | Paulo Rosa |
Head of Flight Segment, Indra Deimos, 1070-061 Lisbon, Portugal. | | Spilios Theodoulis |
Associate Professor, Technical University of Delft, 2628 CD Delft, Netherlands. |
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| Abstract:
The increasing population of defunct satellites and debris in Earth orbit poses a significant threat to the sustainability of future space operations, making active debris removal a critical capability for in-orbit servicing (IOS). A key challenge in such missions is post-capture detumbling, where the combined chaser-target system must be stabilized despite large and uncertain inertia variations, underactuation, and strict actuator limits. This work proposes a novel guidance and control framework that integrates Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI), H-infinity Open Loop Shaping, and Model Predictive Control (MPC) to achieve safe and robust post-capture detumbling. INDI provides real-time linearization and adaptive compensation for modeling errors, while H-infinity tuning offers formal robustness guarantees, and MPC —whose design is simplified by exploiting the INDI linearization — provides a guidance trajectory that enforces actuator and state constraints while optimizing performance objectives. The approach is validated through nonlinear simulations, demonstrating that the H-infinity -tuned INDI control system can stabilize the satellite stack under large inertia uncertainty but causes transient actuator saturation and large angular rates. In contrast, the combined MPC & INDI framework achieves constraint-compliant detumbling and a decrease in settling time. These results establish a robust and computationally efficient guidance and control solution for post-capture operations and lay the ground work for future extensions including flexible dynamics and fuel sloshing effects.
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| Keywords: Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion; H-infinity Open Loop Shaping; Model Predictive Control; Detumbling |
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2026-068 doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-068 |
| João T. Diz, Afonso Botelho, Paulo Rosa, Spilios Theodoulis: Post-Capture Detumbling of Satellites: A Combined Robust INDI and MPC Approach. Proceedings of the 2026 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Madrid, Spain. May 2026. doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-068.
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| BibTeX entry (UTF-8):
@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2026-068,
author = {Diz, João T. and Botelho, Afonso and Rosa, Paulo and Theodoulis, Spilios},
title = {Post-Capture Detumbling of Satellites: A Combined Robust INDI and MPC Approach},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
address = {Madrid, Spain},
month = may,
year = {2026},
doi = {10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-068}
}
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