This monograph reports on the development of the attitude determination backbone of the Ionospheric Observation Nanosatellite Formation (ION-F). Three spacecraft with similarly modest pointing constraints comprise the ION-F constellation. Pointing requirements for the constellation are dictated by the formation flying mission objective and communication demands. To satisfy pointing requirements...

The attitude tracking control problem of a rigid spacecraft with external disturbances is addressed using the concept of extended disturbance and the inverse optimal control method. The proposed attitude tracking control law is inverse optimal with respect to a meaningful cost functional and the associated Lyapunov function satisfies a HamiltonJacobi-Isaacs partial differential equation. Hence,...

The attitude dynamics and manoeuvre survey in this paper is performed for a mission scenario involving a penetrator-type spacecraft, a semi-rigid axisymmetric prolate spacecraft spinning around its minor axis of inertia, requested to perform a 90° spin axis reorientation manoeuvre. In contrast to most existing spacecraft only one attitude control torque is available, perpendicular to the spin a...

Abstract Model-error control synthesis is a nonlinear robust control approach that mitigates the effects of modeling errors and disturbances on a system by providing corrections to the nominal control input directly. In this paper model-error control synthesis is applied to the spacecraft attitude control problem, where the model-error vector is computed using a receding-horizon approximation. ...

In this paper, two different algorithms are presented for the estimation of spacecraft body angular rates in the absence of gyro rate data for a star tracker mission. In first approach, body angular rates are estimated with the spacecraft attitude using a dynamical model of the spacecraft. The second approach makes use of a rapid update rate of star camera to estimate the spacecraft body angula...

This paper deals with the problem of simultaneous vibration suppression and robust attitude control of orbiting spacecraft with flexible appendages. Based on integral variable structure control theory, a discontinuous attitude control law is firstly derived to achieve the desired position of the spacecraft, taking explicitly into account external disturbance and nonlinearity. To reconstruct est...

This article describes a simulator of small satellite attitude environment and dynamics, complete with a set of realistic sensors and the most commonly used actuator in this class of satellites. The simulator described is useful in attitude estimation and control algorithm development. Some results of the simulation of the PoSAT-1 satellite are presented.

This paper investigates the design of spacecraft attitude stabilization controllers that are robust against actuator faults and external disturbances. A nominal controller is developed initially, using the adaptive backstepping technique, to stabilize asymptotically the spacecraft attitude when the actuators are fault-free. Additive faults and the partial loss of actuator effectiveness are cons...

As part of the Space Exploration Analysis and Simulation (SEAS) task, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using physics-based simulations at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to explore potential surface and near-surface mission operations at Near Earth Objects (NEOs). The simulator is under development at JPL and can be used to provide detailed analysis of various s...