Attitude Control and Momentum Management of Inertially Oriented Space Station

Abstract

Manned Space Station features large size and suffers large environmental disturbance torque. To maintain space station attitude stable for long-time without frequent control moment gyros (CMGs) saturation interruption, an attitude and momentum management controller in inertial reference is designed. Firstly the space station attitude dynamics, angular momentum dynamics of CMGs, and aerodynamics are modeled, then the characteristics of gravity gradient torque for inertially oriented space station is analyzed. Subsequently the system dynamics is augmented with the filter states, and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) method is used to design the feedback gain matrix. By rational setting of gain matrix of filter states, the space station can maintain inertially oriented stable without CMGs disaturation. Finally one middle-stage configuration of the Chinese Space Station is demonstrated as an example to validate the design, simulation results show that the angular momentum resulted from gravity gradient torque and aerodynamic torque does not accumulate respectively.