Spin-up Control of Tethered Space Station for Artificial Gravity Task*

In order to overcome the problems caused by the zero gravity of space, artificial gravity space station has been widely concerned in recent years. The tether-based space station relies on the centrifugal force generated by its rotation around the centroid to simulate gravity, which greatly reduces various problems caused by the zero gravity environment, and has many advantages such as low spin speed, flexibility, and scalability. For the spin-up process of the tethered space station, a dynamic model of the tethered space station based on the Lagrange method is established firstly. Then, the control law using sliding mode theory and the dynamic inversion is proposed. Different spin-up schemes are designed to test the control law. Simulation results shows that whether the system’s tether retraction rate is adjustable or not, the angular velocity of the system can smoothly reach the desired value to produce the expected level of artificial gravity.