Spacecraft reorientation control with attitude and velocity constrains

This paper investigates rest-to-rest attitude reorientation problem for a rigid spacecraft in the presence of attitude and angular velocity constraints. Based on a potential function, a nonlinear attitude controller is developed to avoid the undesired celestial objects autonomously and limit the spacecraft rotation speed while achieving asymptotic attitude stabilization. To improve the agility of spacecraft, control moment gyro (CMG) is considered as torque-generating actuators for attitude control. General singular robust (GSR) steering logic is employed to determine the CMG gimbal rate commands. The proposed attitude control scheme has simple structure, which is of great interest for aerospace industry when onboard computing power is limited. Finally, simulation results for a CMG-based spacecraft are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed attitude control systems.