A Satellite Attitude Dynamics Simulator (SADS) has been developed to facilitate the research and development of spacecraft flight attitude control software at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. The simulator provides a real-time 3 degree of freedom (3DOF) synthetic spacecraft hardware-in-the-loop environment, that includes realistic angular motions, sensor-effector delays, and contr...

A novel attitude stabilization control scheme is presented for rigid spacecraft. As a stepping stone, a first-order passivity filter is proposed to generate a velocity-related signal from attitude measurements. Then, a velocity-free attitude stabilization controller is synthesized by using a hyperbolic tangent function. It is shown that the controller render the equilibrium points in the closed...

Attitude determination, along with attitude control, is critical to functioning of every space mission. Here, we investigate the application of a steady-state Kalman Filter for attitude determination using attitude sensors (sun sensor and horizon sensors) and rate integrating gyros. The three-axis steady-state Kalman Filter formulation, adopted from literature, offers obvious computational adva...

This paper addresses three-axis attitude control for a Danish spacecraft, R mer. The algorithm proposed is based on an approximation of the exact feedback linearisation for quaternionic attitude representation. The proposed attitude controller is tested in a simulation study. The environmental disturbances correspond to those expected for the R mer mission. The pros and cons of the algorithm ar...

The Ørsted satellite mission imposes comparatively high requirements on autonomy of the attitude control system. Cost requirements, on the other hand, impose simple hardware and cheap actuators in form of magnetorquer coils. These conflicting requirements are fulfilled through development of novel attitude and control algorithms and wide on-board autonomy. The entire control and attitude determ...

A frictionless environment simulation platform, utilized for accomplishing three-axis attitude control tests in small satellites, is introduced. It is employed to develop, improve, and carry out objective tests of sensors, actuators, and algorithms in the experimental framework. Different sensors (i.e. sun, earth, magnetometer, and an inertial measurement unit) are utilized to assess three-axis...

A novel attitude tacking control method using Time Delay Control (TDC) scheme is developed to provide robust controllability of a rigid hexacopter in case of single or multiple rotor faults. When the TDC scheme is developed, the rotor faults such as the abrupt and/or incipient rotor faults are considered as model uncertainties. The kinematics, modeling of rigid dynamics of hexacopter, and desig...