Motion Control of Tumbling Spacecraft by Repetitive Impulse Inputs

Abstract

We discuss an angular momentum control of a tumbling spacecraft. The proposed control method is to apply an impulse by a space robot arm, to measure and control the relative position and attitude between the target spacecraft, and then to apply another impulse until the rotational motion of the target spacecraft is well damped. A discrete controller is designed using the simplified equations of rotational motion through appropriate coordinate transformation. The stationary response of the closed system is investigated. Numerical simulations are given to show that the angular momentum is efficiently damped.