Stability Analysis of Spacecraft Phase Plane Control Systems: A Brief Overview and Some Problems

Phase plane control (PPC) method has been widely applied to spacecraft control since the 1970s. However, due to its complex nonlinear nature, the stability analysis problem is usually very difficult and is still not fully tackled to date. In this paper, firstly, the typical applications of the PPC method in the field of spacecraft control are briefly overviewed. Then, the typical nonlinear characteristics of the PPC method and their effects on the stability analysis are clearly pointed out. Further, five common stability analysis methods for the spacecraft PPC system are overviewed and analyzed. Particularly, the framework of computer simulation-based stability analysis proposed in recent related literature is introduced and discussed in detail. Finally, from a systems and control perspective, several challenging problems about the stability analysis of the spacecraft PPC system are formally proposed to provide some further research directions in this field.