Spacecraft Modeling, Attitude Determination and Control : Quaternion-based Approach

This book discusses spacecraft attitude control-related topics: spacecraft modeling, spacecraft attitude determination and estimation, and spacecraft attitude controls. Unlike other books addressing these topics, this book focuses on quaternion-based methods because of their many merits. It provides a brief but necessary background on rotation sequence representations and frequently used reference frames that form the foundation of spacecraft attitude description. It then discusses the fundamentals of attitude determination using vector measurements, various efficient (including very recently developed) attitude determination algorithms, and the instruments and methods of popular vector measurements. With available attitude measurements, attitude control designs for inertial point and nadir pointing are presented in terms of required torques which are independent of actuators in use. Given the required control torques, some actuators are not able to generate the accurate control torques; therefore, spacecraft attitude control design methods with achievable torques for these actuators (for example, magnetic torque bars and control moment gyros) are provided. Some rigorous controllability results are provided.

The book also includes attitude control in some special maneuvers and systems, such as orbital-raising, docking and rendezvous, and multi-body space systems that are normally not discussed in similar books. All design methods are based on state-spaced modern control approaches, such as linear quadratic optimal control, robust pole assignment control, model predictive control, and gain scheduling control. Applications of these methods to spacecraft attitude control problems are provided. Appendices are provided for readers who are not familiar with these topics.

Yaguang Yang holds B.S. (1982) and M.S. (1985) degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. From 1985 to 1990, he was a lecturer at Zhejiang University in China. In 1996 he received a PhD degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. Since then, he has designed and implemented control systems at UKIRT, CIENA, ITT, and Orbital Sciences Corporation; he has performed theoretical and applied research and published more than 50 papers in controls and optimizations, developed and implemented algorithms in computer codes, and applied to engineering problems, and he has managed nuclear power plant instrument and control research projects at US NRC. He is currently a system engineer with the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, where he has worked on several space projects, including The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH), The Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR), and is the Principal Investigator (PI) of an applied research project (Model-based optimal engineering design and its application to the advanced trajectory design problem).