Chance-Constrained Control for Safe Spacecraft Autonomy: Convex Programming Approach

This paper presents a robust path-planning framework for safe spacecraft autonomy under uncertainty and develops a computationally tractable formulation based on convex programming. We utilize chance-constrained control to formulate the problem. It provides a mathematical framework to solve for a sequence of control policies that minimizes a probabilistic cost under probabilistic constraints with a user-defined confidence level (e.g., safety with 99.9% confidence). The framework enables the planner to directly control state distributions under operational uncertainties while ensuring the vehicle safety. This paper rigorously formulates the safe autonomy problem, gathers and extends techniques in literature to accommodate key cost/constraint functions that often arise in spacecraft path planning, and develops a tractable solution method. The presented framework is demonstrated via two representative numerical examples: safe autonomous rendezvous and orbit maintenance in cislunar space, both under uncertainties due to navigation error from Kalman filter, execution error via Gates model, and imperfect force models.