Sun-Avoidance Slew Planning with Keep-Out Cone and Actuator Constraints

This paper presents a geometric approach for a sun (or any bright object) avoidance slew maneuver with pointing and actuator constraints. It is assumed that a gyrostat has a single light-sensitive payload with control-torque and reaction wheels' angular momentum constraints. Furthermore, it is assumed that the initial and final attitudes, an instrument's line-of-sight vector, and sun vector are known. Then Pontryagin's minimum principle is used, and the desired or target-frame quaternions, angular velocity, and acceleration are derived. In the end, numerical simulations are performed to show the viability of the proposed algorithm with control-torque and angular momentum constraints.