{
  "abstract": "This paper presents a closed-form test that decides, before the maneuver begins, whether a chaser can reach and hold station at the hold point of a tumbling, uncooperative target inside a line-of-sight (LOS) corridor that turns with the target. A closed-loop controller cannot answer this question: a receding-horizon controller checks the corridor only over its prediction horizon, and near a tumbling target the corridor sweeps past faster than bounded thrust can follow, so a start that is feasible at the first step can become unrecoverable later. Today the only ways to know are to fly the controller in simulation or to compute a Hamilton--Jacobi reachable set, both too slow onboard. The test combines two criteria derived from bounded-thrust relative orbital dynamics: a directional erosion margin, the corridor margin that rotation-induced drift consumes before the thruster arrests it, and a synchronization radius, beyond which the apparent rotational velocity cannot be cancelled. Guidance pairs a three-regime tracking law with a receding-horizon quadratic program. Benchmarked against polytopic backward and forward reachable sets, Hamilton--Jacobi level sets and closed-loop Monte Carlo simulation, the test runs over two orders of magnitude faster than Hamilton--Jacobi and, over 500 closed-loop cases, predicts feasibility with 91% recall and 80% precision. The gap to Hamilton--Jacobi is structural, not a method error: reaching the hold point and co-rotating with it is a stronger requirement than arriving with arbitrary velocity, and the gap widens with tumble rate. The test therefore gives an onboard go/no-go answer where Hamilton--Jacobi reachability is too expensive.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": "Journal reference: Proceedings of the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2026), Antalya, Türkiye, 2026",
  "arxiv": "2607.02128",
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Omer Burak Iskender"
    },
    {
      "name": "Keck Voon Ling"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wee Seng Lim"
    },
    {
      "name": "Erick Lansard"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/46mggv37qsfyn.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2607.02128",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "46mggv37qsfyn",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02128",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.SY"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "eess.SY"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.space-ph"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.02128",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-13",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/46mggv37qsfyn.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:21:25Z",
      "native_id": "2607.02128",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02128"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.space-ph",
      "subfield": "stellar"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Reachability-Based Safe-Start Regions for Approach to a Tumbling Target with Rotating LOS Constraints",
  "title_text": "Reachability-Based Safe-Start Regions for Approach to a Tumbling Target with Rotating LOS Constraints",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:21:25Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/46mggv37qsfyn",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}