Attitude Control of a Spacecraft during an Orbital Maneuver for Fast Rejecting of the Large Disturbance Torque without Using the Reaction Control System

Abstract

During an impulsive orbital maneuver, thrust vector misalignment from the center of mass (C.M) generates a large exogenous disturbance torque that results in attitude deviation. This paper aims not to use the reaction control system (RCS) for the spacecraft attitude control. In order to reject the large disturbance very fast, a new control system is proposed. In this method, the large disturbance torque is rejected quickly while the RCS is not employed. The control system is based on one degree of freedom (1DoF) gimbaled-thruster, spin-stabilization, and two control moment gyros (CMG). The nonlinear two-body dynamics of the mentioned spacecraft is formulated. Because RCS is not used, this method is an efficient and implementable method for attitude control of small spacecraft. Numerical simulation shows that thrust vector deviation converges to zero despite disturbance torques. By this method, the disturbance is rejected very fast; thus an accurate orbital velocity change can be obtained. This method can eliminate the initial attitude deviation easily in addition to disturbance rejection. The results show the good performance and superiority of the proposed method compared to some other thrusting maneuver methods.