Horizon-Dependent Tube MPC for Elliptical-Orbit Rendezvous Under Mass Uncertainty

[2608.27659] Horizon-Dependent Tube MPC for Elliptical-Orbit Rendezvous Under Mass Uncertainty Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Electrical Engineering and Systems Science > Systems and Control arXiv:2608.27659 (eess) [Submitted on 27 Aug 2026] Title: Horizon-Dependent Tube MPC for Elliptical-Orbit Rendezvous Under Mass Uncertainty Authors: Omer Burak Iskender , Keck-Voon Ling View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: A spacecraft closing on a target from three hundred kilometres to contact flies one guidance law across five orders of magnitude of range, and a controller that is provably safe at close range can lose that guarantee completely at long range while continuing to fly as though nothing were wrong. This paper derives the range at which the guarantee lapses and uses it as a design rule. The bound compares the prediction model's own linearisation error against the disturbance set the controller was built to reject, and needs only the sampling period, the orbit and that disturbance bound, so it can be evaluated before any simulation. On a Mars Sample Return approach it disqualifies the homing phase, where most of the propellant is spent, and clears the other two. Re-posing the disqualified phase in relative orbital elements restores the guarantee; re-posing a phase the rule already clears, in a frame two orders of magnitude more accurate, changes propellant by under a tenth of one per cent, and it is that second prediction that makes the rule falsifiable rather than descriptive. The constraint tightening also ties the prediction horizon to feasibility, so the horizon search limit becomes a mission parameter rather than a solver setting. Against a reimplementation of a published benchmark that reproduces its propellant to within one per cent, over five hundred dispersed Monte Carlo transfers per case on matched seeds, the controller saves 29% of the propellant on a circular target orbit and 40% on an eccentric one, docking inside the 0.20 m capture requirement on essentially every draw at a median miss near 5 cm. Two results run the other way: the saving is bought with time of flight and computation, and it comes from what the guarantee demanded of the terminal condition rather than from better disturbance rejection. Recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability are not claimed. Comments: 19 pages, 12 figures, 8 tables. Accepted for presentation at the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2026), Antalya, Turkiye, 5-9 October 2026; paper IAC-26,C1,4,9,x108305. Accepted version (authors' preprint), not the version of record. Typeset in a plain article class rather than the IAF conference template Subjects: Systems and Control (eess.SY) ; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Space Physics (physics.space-ph) MSC classes: 93B45, 93D09, 70M20, 90C20 ACM classes: J.2; I.2.8 Cite as: arXiv:2608.27659 [eess.SY] (or arXiv:2608.27659v1 [eess.SY] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.27659 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Omer Burak Iskender [ view email ] [v1] Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:46:35 UTC (2,436 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: eess.SY < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: astro-ph astro-ph.IM cs cs.SY eess physics physics.space-ph References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. 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