Study on attitude control for move-to-rest manoeuvre of flexible spacecraft

Abstract

In order to suppress appendages’ vibration of a flexible spacecraft during attitude manoeuvre and meet the control requirements of high pointing accuracy, high stability and rapidity of manoeuvre for spacecraft, an attitude control scheme with attitude guidance is proposed. For the case of non-zero initial angular velocity, a move-to-rest attitude manoeuvre path based on sinusoidal angular acceleration is designed for flexible spacecraft. The angular acceleration of the attitude slew path is smooth and continuous, which can reduce appendages’ vibration exciting by manoeuvre. And a novel attitude control scheme with flexible dynamics is designed which is independent of modal information. The stability of the attitude control system is proved based on Lyapunov theory. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The control algorithm is robust to disturbances, and easy to implement as well.