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2014 | Book

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Fundamentals of Spacecraft Attitude Determination and Control

Authors: F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis

Publisher: Springer New York

Book Series : Space Technology Library

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

This book explores topics that are central to the field of spacecraft attitude determination and control. The authors provide rigorous theoretical derivations of significant algorithms accompanied by a generous amount of qualitative discussions of the subject matter. The book documents the development of the important concepts and methods in a manner accessible to practicing engineers, graduate-level engineering students and applied mathematicians. It includes detailed examples from actual mission designs to help ease the transition from theory to practice and also provides prototype algorithms that are readily available on the author’s website.

Subject matter includes both theoretical derivations and practical implementation of spacecraft attitude determination and control systems. It provides detailed derivations for attitude kinematics and dynamics and provides detailed description of the most widely used attitude parameterization, the quaternion. This title also provides a thorough treatise of attitude dynamics including Jacobian elliptical functions. It is the first known book to provide detailed derivations and explanations of state attitude determination and gives readers real-world examples from actual working spacecraft missions. The subject matter is chosen to fill the void of existing textbooks and treatises, especially in state and dynamics attitude determination. MATLAB code of all examples will be provided through an external website.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
Spacecraft attitude determination and control covers the entire range of techniques for determining the orientation of a spacecraft and then controlling it so that the spacecraft points in some desired direction. The attitude estimation and attitude control problems are coupled, but they can be considered separately to some extent. The separation theorem for linear systems shown in Sect. 12.​3.​9 tells us that the control system can be designed without considering the estimator and vice versa. Specifically, the feedback gains in the control system can be chosen assuming that the system’s state is perfectly known. No general separation theorem exists for nonlinear systems, including spacecraft attitude control systems, but the pointing requirements for most space missions have been satisfied by designing the attitude determination and control systems separately.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 2. Matrices, Vectors, Frames, Transforms
Abstract
This chapter begins with an overview of matrices and vectors, which are used extensively in attitude analysis. We assume that the reader has some familiarity with this material, so the account is not completely self-contained. The principal objective of this section is to define our notation and conventions.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 3. Attitude Kinematics and Dynamics
Abstract
This chapter begins with a discussion of the kinematics of rotations, or attitude kinematics, and then moves on to attitude dynamics. The distinction between kinematics and dynamics is that kinematics covers those aspects of motion that can be analyzed without consideration of forces or torques. When forces and torques are introduced, we are in the realm of dynamics. To make this distinction clear, consider the motion of a point particle in Newtonian physics. If r denotes position, v denotes velocity, and time derivatives are indicated by a dot, then the kinematic equation of motion is simply \(\dot {\mathbf {r}}=\mathbf {v}\). The dynamic equation of motion is \(m\dot {\mathbf {v}}=\mathbf {F}\) or \(\dot {\mathbf {p}}=\mathbf {F}\), where F is the applied force and p ≡ mv is the translational momentum. Kinematics and dynamics are often subsumed under the single term dynamics by combining the kinematic and dynamic equations in the single relation \(m\ddot {\mathbf {r}}=\mathbf {F}\). In fact, it is common in filtering theory to apply the term dynamics to any relation expressing time dependence.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 4. Sensors and Actuators
Abstract
This chapter will discuss several kinds of sensors and actuators used to determine and control spacecraft attitude [26, 44, 54, 66]. The history of attitude sensor development has emphasized increased resolution and accuracy as well as decreased size, weight, and power (often abbreviated as SWaP). Actuator technologies have also been scaled down to be appropriate for microsatellites and cubesats. We begin with a brief introduction to redundancy considerations, and then consider some specific sensors and actuators.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 5. Static Attitude Determination Methods
Abstract
Attitude determination typically requires finding three independent quantities, such as any minimal parameterization of the attitude matrix. The mathematics behind attitude determination can be broadly characterized into approaches that use stochastic analysis and approaches that do not. We restrict the term “estimation” to approaches that explicitly account for stochastic variables in the mathematical formulation, such as a Kalman filter or a maximum likelihood approach [29]. Black’s 1964 TRIAD algorithm was the first published method for determining the attitude of a spacecraft using body and reference observations, but his method could only combine the information from two measurements [2]. One year later, Wahba formulated a general criterion for attitude determination using two or more vector measurements [36]. However, explicit relations to stochastic errors in the body measurements are not shown in these formulations. The connection to the stochastic nature associated with random measurement noise was first made by Farrell in a Kalman filtering application that appeared in a NASA report in 1964 [11], but was not published in the archival literature until 1970 [12]. Farrell’s filter did not account for errors in the system dynamics, which were first accounted for in a Kalman filter developed by Potter and Vander Velde in 1968 [27].
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 6. Filtering for Attitude Estimation and Calibration
Abstract
Attitude estimation refers to the process of estimating the current attitude state of a system from a set of measured observations. The state estimation problem involves finding the best estimate of the true system state using a dynamic model and measurements that are both corrupted with random noise of known statistics. The variables to be estimated are usually collected into a state vector, which typically includes other variables in addition to the attitude. For example, star tracker measurements can be combined with a kinematics model, which is propagated using gyroscopic measurements.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 7. Attitude Control
Abstract
Spacecraft attitude control is essential to meet mission pointing requirements, such as required science modes and thruster pointing requirements for orbital maneuvers. Early spacecraft mission designs used passive spin stabilization to hold one axis relatively fixed by spinning the spacecraft around that axis, usually the axis of maximum moment of inertia. Spin stabilization was mostly used due to the limited control actuation and lack of sophisticated computer technology to implement complex control laws. Spin-stabilized spacecraft are very stable, but they have to be sensitively balanced; every component has to be designed and located with spacecraft balance in mind. This can be extremely difficult to accomplish to the required accuracy. In most cases the last few weights are added and adjusted only after actual flight hardware is delivered and installed, and the spacecraft is experimentally spin tested. Allowances must also be made for everything onboard that can move during flight.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 8. Quaternion Identities
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to present a collection of vector and quaternion identities that are useful for control and estimation computations. Many of them used throughout this text. Several appear in Chap. 2 but are repeated here for convenience.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 9. Euler Angles
Abstract
This chapter presents explicit expressions for the attitude matrices and kinematic matrices for all the 12 Euler and Tait-Bryan angle attitude representations. We first present the attitude matrices for the symmetric and asymmetric sets. Then the kinematic matrices B(θ, ψ), defined by Eq. (3.​39), and their inverses are shown for all the symmetric and asymmetric sets.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 10. Orbital Dynamics
Abstract
The study of bodies in orbit has attracted the world’s greatest mathematicians in the past, and remains a flourishing subject area in the present. In fact many useful mathematical concepts, such as Bessel functions and nonlinear least squares, can be directly traced back to the study of orbital motion. Here the basic equations and concepts of orbital dynamics are introduced. More details can be found in the references herein.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 11. Environment Models
Abstract
The analysis of spacecraft attitude and trajectory motion depends on several environmental models, as does the analysis of sensor measurements. This chapter presents models of the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere and of the motion of the Sun and its planets as seen from the Earth.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Chapter 12. Review of Control and Estimation Theory
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a review of control and estimation theory. It is expected that the reader has some basic knowledge of dynamical systems and probability theory. Several of the concepts shown in this chapter are used throughout the text. First a basic review of system modeling using differential equations is shown. This is followed by linear and nonlinear control theory. Then estimation concepts, such as maximum likelihood and the Kalman filter, are reviewed. The reader is encouraged to read the several cited texts in this chapter for further information.
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Correction to: Fundamentals of Spacecraft Attitude Determination and Control
F. Landis Markley, John L. Crassidis
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Fundamentals of Spacecraft Attitude Determination and Control
Authors
F. Landis Markley
John L. Crassidis
Copyright Year
2014
Publisher
Springer New York
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4939-0802-8
Print ISBN
978-1-4939-0801-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0802-8

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