Estimation for spacecraft docking with a known target

The problem of autonomous docking in space is difficult, open, and increasingly important. In the case of this report, a chaser spacecraft attempting to dock with the International Docking System Standard on a target craft is analyzed. After motivating the need for augmenting the relative position and orientation estimates with the estimates of their rates, an Extended Kalman Filter is derived to estimate these states with LIDAR and accelerometer measurements. The main assumptions for this report are that the target be in a nearly circular orbit and that the chaser start in near proximity of the target and have access to its own orientation. The filter is shown to work along a predetermined trajectory with both deadbeat control informed by the true state and a closed-loop feedback controller informed by the estimated state