Abstract
In this paper, the asymptotic tracking control problem of a rigid spacecraft is considered. Three type control laws are presented by using backstepping technique in the framework of the globally nonsingular unit quaternion representation of a spacecraft. The first one is a PD-type control law which doesn’t require much information about the spacecraft model. The second is model-dependent, that is, the inertia matrix of the spacecraft needs to be exactly known. And the last one is derived by adaptive control assuming that the inertia matrix is unknown. Furthermore, an application of rendezvous docking to an uncooperative target is presented.
