Inter-spacecraft electromagnetic proximity operation has many potential advantages, such as no propellant consumption and plume contamination, while providing high-precision, continuous, reversible, synchronous, and non-contacting control capability. In addition, with constant magnetic moment actuation, the inter-spacecraft electromagnetic force is, in essence, a kind of conservative force and has dynamics conservation. This yields specific and targeted evolvement laws of relative motion among these actuated magnetic dipoles. Exploiting these properties, spacecraft self- and soft-docking could be achieved with proper piece-wise constant magnetic moments design, which not only improves control precision, but also reduces the demand of relative motion measurement and simplifies docking controller design. Aiming at electromagnetic spacecraft self- and soft-docking controller design, this paper uses dynamic modeling and dynamics conservation analysis to derive the specific evolvement laws of relative motion between the actuated magnetic dipoles first, and then utilize these laws and corresponding dynamics conservation to design the piece-wise constant electromagnetic moments.

中文翻译：

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利用动力学守恒对航天器自对接和软对接的恒定电磁矩的分段控制

航天器间电磁接近操作具有许多潜在优势，如无推进剂消耗和羽流污染，同时提供高精度、连续、可逆、同步和非接触控制能力。此外，在恒定磁矩驱动下，航天器间的电磁力本质上是一种保守力，具有动力学守恒。这产生了这些驱动磁偶极子之间相对运动的特定和有针对性的演变规律。利用这些特性，通过适当的分段恒磁矩设计可以实现航天器的自对接和软对接，不仅提高了控制精度，而且减少了相对运动测量的需求，简化了对接控制器的设计。