Fuzzy logical control is a robust and effective control method in industrial fields, which renders it applicable to the attitude control of a solar sail. However, it is hard to apply in black-box and time-varying problem as real solar sail attitude control. Considering the lack of a priori knowledge and the unacceptable manual workload in the design of the fuzzy logical controller (FLC), an intelligent FLC designer (IFLCD) is developed by introducing neural network modelling and automatic design method. Besides, IFLCD also supports self-adaption for better control accuracy. By applying the proposed IFLCD in the attitude stabilization of a solar sail with individually controllable elements (SSICE), an effective solution of unmanned, time-varying, and complex system control method is offered without any mathematical model, which also overcomes the difficulties in FLC design Considering the performance degradation, accident, and distance problems faced by spacecraft, IFLCD can help with more practical problems that are hard be solved by traditional control theory.

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The deflecting asteroid by dusting (DAD) mission addresses the challenges of deflecting a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) that has a large probability of impacting Earth. It is an innovative and mass-minimalist approach to exploit PHAs by using the dusting deflection method. This conceptual design is developed based on an asteroid space duster, which is a space miner that is equipped with dust mining equipment, path-finding systems, and robotic capabilities, that converts available materials into mining prospects. It also stores energy to power the space miner and produces thrust to deflect the asteroid. The primary goals of DAD are to use the dust-to-thrust dusting technique on a PHA and to characterize and measure the deflection caused by the dusting. The 99942 Apophis is used as the reference asteroid in the dust-to-thrust study to test the feasibility of using the approach for deflecting PHAs. There are currently no methods that continuously use the dust-to-thrust approach from an asteroid mining perspective in comparison to the existing deflecting asteroid concepts. This unsolved problem is the focus of the DAD-related study.

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