ROBUST CLOSED-LOOP CONTROL DESIGN FOR SPACECRAFT SLEW MANEUVER USING THRUSTERS

In this paper, a closed-loop snitching function for on-off thruster fi rings is proposed to provide good attitude control performance in the presence of modeling errors for single-axis slew maneuver of a rigid s pacecraft and to eliminate double-sided thruster firings. The size of a single-sided deadband in the switching function provides the capabil ity of a tradeoff between maneuver time and fuel expenditure. The appl ication of this switching function for the single-axis slew maneuvers of flexible spacecraft is also analyzed. The analytical simulations an d experimental results demonstrate that the proposed switching functio n provides significant improvement in the slew maneuver performance.