The Distributed Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator (DSACSS) testbed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University facilitates investigation of various control strategies for single and multiple spacecraft. DSACSS is comprised of two independent hardware-in-the-loop simulators and one software spacecraft simulator. The two hardware-in-theloop spacecraft simulators have similar...

Control problem of a spacecraft is an important topic in automatic control engineering. A body orbiting the Earth in geosynchronous orbit has instabilities in attitude dynamics and disturbances caused by the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and other bodies in space. These effects force the body to lose initial orbit and attitude. Here the control system takes important part of spacecraft missions wher...

-The attitude stabilization problem of a rigid spacecraft using control torques supplied by gas jet actuators about only two of its principal axes is considered. If the uncontrolled principal axis of the spacecraft is not an axis of symmetry, then the complete spacecraft dynamics are small time locally controllable. However, the spacecraft cannot be asymptotically stabilized to any equilibrium ...

It is well known that complete attitude control of a spacecraft is not possible with only one single-gimbal Variable-Speed Control Moment Gyro (VSCMG) due to the conservation of the angular momentum. However, partial attitude control without violating the angular momentum conservation principle is still possible. In this paper, feedback controllers that stabilize the angular velocity vector of ...

The attitude tracking control problem of uncertain rigid spacecraft without angular velocity measurements is addressed in this paper. The adaptive control law, which incorporates a velocity-generating filter from attitude measurements, is shown to ensure the asymptotic convergence of the attitude and angular velocity tracking errors despite unknown spacecraft inertia. Simulation results are pre...

The research presented in this report focuses on the spacecraft simulators, Whorl-I and Whorl-II, in the Space Systems Simulation Laboratory (SSSL) at Virginia Tech. The goal of this research is to develop a program to visualize the attitude of the simulators in real-time through Analytical Graphics Inc.’s Systems Tool Kit (STK). Spacecraft missions are high-risk and highexpense; therefore, ext...

This article contains a description of main ideas for the attitude reorientation of spacecraft (small dual-spin spacecraft, nanosatellites) using properties of its chaotic attitude motion under the action of internal perturbations. The considering method based on intentional initiations of chaotic modes of the attitude motion with big amplitudes of the nutation oscillations, and also on the red...

In this paper the attitude tracking problem is solved for a flexible spacecraft in the case of measurements of the variables describing the attitude error. Such a control could be applied in failure situations for recovering a spacecraft, so increasing the fault tolerance of the spacecraft control system and the success of the mission. The result is a dynamic controller capable of reconstructin...

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the coordinated attitude control problem without velocity measurements. Based on the recently introduced unit quaternion output feedback for the attitude tracking of a rigid body, we present a class of decentralized coordinated control laws to solve the alignment problem for a group of spacecraft within a formation without velocity measurements. The approach...