Rate-profiler based minimum-time control for spacecraft attitude manoeuvre

A rapid and stable rest-to-rest manoeuvre-scheme is developed for a spacecraft which needs a quick attitude reorientation. By using this scheme, a minimum-time manoeuvre is realized under the limit of sensor's and actuator's capability. In this scheme, the satellite target-rate, which is commanded to the attitude-rate controller, is generated by the rate-profiler prior to the manoeuvre. This practical manoeuvre scheme is adopted on a Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite: ASTRO-E. In this paper, the proposed method is presented and its effectiveness is demonstrated by numerical simulations and the ground test performed on the actual AOCS. Copyright(C) 2001 IFAC.