Guidance and Control for Laser-Based Non-Cooperative Target Detumbling

Large pieces of orbital debris form a significant risk of fragmentation in case of collision. Such fragmentation would greatly increase the number of trackable and untrackable debris on orbit. This makes them attractive targets for future rendezvous and disposal missions. However, these non-cooperative targets tend to be tumbling and rendezvous with them is a dangerous prospect. To avoid this danger, contactless detumbling through laser ablation has been proposed prior to rendezvous. Existing proposals for contactless laser-based detumbling have yet to include an in-depth study of the problem's guidance, navigation, and control requirements. In this work we develop an attitude and relative motion control scheme for a chaser satellite detumbling a non-cooperative target via laser. We show that detumbling can be achieved with reasonable time and dV budgets. With Monte Carlo methods we explore the impact of laser force on the detumbling operation and reveal some non-intuitive relationships.