Attitude feedback control: Unconstrained and nonholonomic constrained cases

The problem is considered of asymptotically driving, the attitude of a spacecraft via feedback control. First, a simple feedback control structure based on the measure of the equivalent angle axis is determined for a fully actuated system. Then, the same reasoning is used to find the solution for a spacecraft operating in failure mode, that is, whenever the angular velocity vector is constrained to lie in one of the spacecraft's coordinate planes. The basic aim is to show that with a simple choice for the attitude parameterization, a simple and effective structure for the feedback control law can be obtained.