INTRODUCTION The Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) plays an essential role in the flight control of a spacecraft. This system usually contains a minimum of three reaction wheels (often 4-5 wheels are used for optimization and redundancy [1]). By accelerating the appropriate wheels, the system can produce a zero-mean reaction torque about any axis to the spacecraft, which enables the spac...

Some problems on guidance and robust gyromoment attitude control of agile spacecraft for remote sensing the Earth surface are considered. Elaborated methods for dynamic research of the spacecraft programmed angular motion at principle modes under external and parametric disturbances, partial discrete measurement of the state and digital control of the gyro moment cluster by the few-excessive gy...

In this paper the earth’s magnetic field is simulated precisely while the intensity and direction of the field are verified with one of the standard references for selected points on the earth and the results are compared with some low-order models. In another simulation, the complete model is compared with a common approximate model. The magnetic field in orbital frame is described and to empl...

A fault tolerant control (FTC) design technique against actuator stuck faults is investigated using integral-type sliding mode control (ISMC) with application to spacecraft attitude maneuvering control system. The principle of the proposed FTC scheme is to design an integral-type sliding mode attitude controller using on-line parameter adaptive updating law to compensate for the effects of stuc...

Nonlinear Predictive Control of Spacecraft John L. Crassidis F. Landis Markley Tobin C. Anthony Stephen F. Andrews Abstract A new approach for the control of a spacecraft with large angle maneuvers is presented. This new approach is based on a nonlinear predictive control scheme which determines the required torque input so that the predicted responses match the desired trajectories. This is ac...

A DVANCES in networking and distributed computing enable numerous applications for multivehicle systems including space-based observations, future combat systems, smart homes, enhanced surveillance systems, hazardous material handling systems, and reconfigurable sensing systems. In some applications, it is desirable that multiple vehicles maintain a geometric configuration and achieve relative ...

ORBCOMM is a LEO communications spacecraft, providing global point to point packet messaging. Two are in operation now, and the rest of the (eventually 36) constellation design spacecraft are currently in integration and test. The ORBCOMM ACS mission is to point a communications antenna to nadir, while maintaining continuous Sun tracking via spacecraft yaw maneuvers. This mission is achieved us...