CEAS EuroGNC 2026
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Robust Model Predictive Control for Rendezvous with Relative Orbital Elements and System Level Synthesis
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| Afonso Botelho |
PhD Candidate, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, INESC-ID, and DEIMOS Engenharia, Lisbon, Portugal. | | Paulo Rosa |
Head of Flight Segment, DEIMOS Engenharia, Lisbon, Portugal. | | João M. Lemos |
Full Professor, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. Senior Researcher, INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal. |
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| Abstract:
We propose a System Level Synthesis (SLS) Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach to guidance and control (G&C) of the relative orbit for spacecraft rendezvous. SLS-MPC jointly optimizes a nominal trajectory and linear correction policy via convex optimization, which provides improved performance and feasibility with respect to practical Robust MPC (RMPC) methods, namely Linear Tube-Based MPC, which solely optimizes the nominal trajectory. Although this improvement comes at the cost of increased computational complexity, we show that a single initial SLS optimization can generate a nominal trajectory and correction policy that achieves performance comparable to standard RMPC, in a strategy which we call One-Shot SLS-MPC. Therefore, SLS can soften the dependence of MPC on real-time and recursive optimization, and more so given that the sole crucial optimization problem may be solved prior to the manoeuvre start while maintaining a time-flexible and safe hold point. Alternative deployment strategies are also discussed, which allow for trading-off between G&C performance and computational complexity. We also leverage a relative orbital element (ROE) state representation, in particular to formulate a novel simple and convex passive safety path constraint with limited conservativeness, and a dynamical prediction model that includes both J2 and drag perturbations. Numerical results in a far-range rendezvous scenario show the improved fuel performance and feasibility of SLS-MPC with respect to Linear Tube-Based MPC.
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| Keywords: Model Predictive Control (MPC); System Level Synthesis (SLS); Onboard Optimization; Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO); Guidance and Control (G&C) |
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2026-069 doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-069 |
| Afonso Botelho, Paulo Rosa, João M. Lemos: Robust Model Predictive Control for Rendezvous with Relative Orbital Elements and System Level Synthesis. Proceedings of the 2026 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Madrid, Spain. May 2026. doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-069.
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| BibTeX entry (UTF-8):
@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2026-069,
author = {Botelho, Afonso and Rosa, Paulo and Lemos, João M.},
title = {Robust Model Predictive Control for Rendezvous with Relative Orbital Elements and System Level Synthesis},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
address = {Madrid, Spain},
month = may,
year = {2026},
doi = {10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-069}
}
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