Research into spacecraft autonomy has become increasingly important. Indeed, with a growing debris population, robots capable of performing routine tasks autonomously (such as simple repairs/maintenance, refueling, or debris removal) may become increasingly essential for actively preventing disasters. In this context, several autonomous missions to uncooperative targets (generally tumbling or orbiting Earth in an elliptical orbit) will require Rendezvous and Docking operations (RPO).

In this project, I've worked on designing a Control Scheme for a Thrust-Vectoring Satellite using a Koopman operator-based approach for it to rendezvous with a tumbling noncooperative Satellite under Prof. Debasish Ghose. The Koopman operator provides a linear, infinite-dimensional representation of the nonlinear dynamics, enabling the use of linear control synthesis tools on an inherently nonlinear problem.

The framework was validated in simulation, demonstrating successful rendezvous and proximity operations with a non-cooperative target undergoing complex tumbling motion under orbital mechanics constraints.