Passively Safe Convex Guidance for Cislunar Rendezvous and Proximity Operations

Ian M. Down; Connor Plaks; Matthew Bolliger; Michael Caudill

cs.ROAug 4, 2026

Passively Safe Convex Guidance for Cislunar Rendezvous and Proximity Operations

Authors: Ian M. Down, Connor Plaks, Matthew Bolliger, Michael Caudill

Organizations: Astrodynamics Engineer, Advanced Space, LLC, 1400 W 122nd Ave, Suite 200, Westminster, CO 80234 · Navigation Engineer, Advanced Space, LLC, 1400 W 122nd Ave, Suite 200, Westminster, CO 80234 · Senior Astrodynamics Engineer, Advanced Space, LLC, 1400 W 122nd Ave, Suite 200, Westminster, CO 80234 · Former Senior Navigation Engineer, Advanced Space, LLC, 1400 W 122nd Ave, Suite 200, Westminster, CO 80234

Abstract

This paper presents purely convex programs for passively safe impulsive rendezvous and proximity operations in cislunar orbits. Approach, arrival, and abort maneuvers are all designed and validated in the context of maneuver execution error and navigation uncertainty, and formulated for efficient onboard execution in the autonomous scenario. The outlined methods form the baseline onboard guidance routines for NASA's CAPSTONE 02 mission planned to demonstrate autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations capabilities in the southern 9:2 synodic near rectilinear halo orbit. High fidelity closed loop Monte Carlo simulations using the planned relative navigation sensor suite and measurement cadence verify the intended maneuver design performance.

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Sep 21, 2026 · math.OCJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Transformer-Informed Trajectory Optimization for Relative Motion in Cislunar Orbits

Walter J. Manuel, Yuji Takubo, Simone D'Amico

Autonomous spacecraft guidance and control requires a fast solution to non-convex trajectory optimization, which can be accelerated by providing a near-optimal initial guess to an optimization protocol, i.e., warm-starting. A robust warm starting method is especially useful for rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPOD) in cislunar space, where the underlying dynamics become severely nonlinear and chaotic compared to those in Earth orbit, especially at perilune. This paper extends the Autonomous Rendezvous Transformer (ART), a transformer-based warm-start trajectory generation method, to cislunar RPOD scenarios for the first time. To accurately and reliably solve the nonconvex optimal control problems (OCPs) posed by these scenarios, a new and enhanced version of ART, ART-TWIN (Two-Way INference), is introduced. Inspired by forward-backward shooting methods used in other trajectory design applications, ART-TWIN autoregressively generates two arcs, one from the initial state and one from the desired terminal state, that are patched together at the midpoint of the timeseries. When evaluated on a set of simulated rendezvous scenarios that are initialized at perilune, ART-TWIN is demonstrated to substantially accelerate convergence and increase feasibility guarantees when used as a warm-start to sequential convex programming (SCP), compared to convex relaxations and the original ART. These results illustrate the necessity of ART-TWIN's dual-arc generation to enable the viability of and gain benefits from using transformer-based warm-start methods in the most challenging areas of the cislunar dynamical regime.

Spacecraft Trajectory Optimization

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Abstract

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