AAS 07-130 AN EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF SPACECRAFT ATTITUDE AND POWER TRACKING WITH VARIABLE SPEED CONTROL MOMENT GYROSCOPES

Variable speed control moment gyros (VSCMGs) distinguish themselves from the conventional CMGs by having extra degrees of freedom to control the wheel spin in addition to the gimbal angles. Thus, they can be adopted to achieve additional objectives, such as energy storage, as well as attitude control. VSCMGs are ideal for integrated power and attitude control systems (IPACS). The gimbal rates of the VSCMGs can be used to provide the attitude control torque, whereas the wheel accelerations can be used for both attitude tracking and power tracking. Several control laws for simultaneous attitude and power tracking have been proposed in the literature. In this paper we experimentally validate an IPACS control law proposed in our previous work using a realistic 3-dof spacecraft simulator.