Libration suppression of tethered space system with a moving climber in circular orbit

This paper studies the dynamics and libration suppression of a tethered system with a moving climber in circular orbits. The tethered system is modeled by a two-piece dumbbell model that consists of one main satellite, one climber and one end-body connected by two straight, massless and inextensible tethers. A new tension control strategy to suppress the libration of the tethered system due to the moving climber is proposed by reeling in-out tether at the end-body without thrust. The control strategy is implemented with the sliding mode control to suppress the libration angle of the climber to zero by the end of climber’s transfer phase. The numerical results show that the proposed control strategy is very effective in suppressing the libration of the climber in the three-body tethered system with tension control only. Furthermore, cases with limited tension control are examined. It reveals that a longer tether between the climber and the end-body is required to supplement the limited tension in suppressing the libration of the climber.