ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 treats the spacecraft attitude control problem for two special operations, attitude maneuver and orbitraising, which are needed for many space missions. Torques and forces used for attitude control and orbit raising are normally generated by thrusters. The control system model and controller designs depend on the thruster configuration. This chapter describes how to design the controller using the standard linear system theory. Although a particular thruster configuration is considered in this chapter, the idea can easily be used for any other thruster configurations. Section 12.1 briefly discusses the attitude maneuver which is a general spacecraft operation and is likely to be used for some other missions. Section 12.2 is about the idea of orbit-raising control using a reduced quaternion model. Most of the existing textbooks do not include the orbit-raising control problems discussed in this chapter. Comparison of two different designs based on quaternion model and Euler angle model is given in section 12.3.
