Autonomous Cislunar Relative Orbit control for CubeSats (ACRO-Cube) - 2026_CDR_DAER_4

ACRO-Cube aims to enable safe and fuel-efficient station-keeping of CubeSats – small, low-cost satellites roughly the size of a shoebox – flying in formation in cislunar space, the vast and dynamically complex region between the Earth and the Moon. The project pursues three objectives: (1) Derive and verify less nonlinear relative orbital dynamics models, based on spherical and action-angle variables, to capture the chaotic nature of cislunar trajectories and reduce error growth, (2) Design and validate a tube-based predictive controller that is robust to model uncertainties and environmental perturbations, while remaining compatible with the limited propulsion and onboard computing resources of CubeSats. (3) Validate the controller in hardware-in-the-loop tests.