Choosing control parameters for three axis magnetic stabilization in orbital frame

Deorbit kit demonstration mission

“…DKD use exclusively magnetic actuation in the predeployment phase to point the spacecraft longitudinal axis 15º off from the nadir direction. Although magnetorquers can only generate a torque perpendicular to the Earth's magnetic field, they can be used to achieve a stable nadir-pointing attitude when high pointing requirements are not needed [15,16,17]. The team developed magnetic control algorithms valid for any direction contained within the orbital plane.…”

Gain Selection for Attitude Stabilization of Earth-Pointing Spacecraft Using Magnetorquers

“…Note that employing matrix gains K p and K d provides more degrees of freedom to the control action with respect to adopting scalar gains as in [2,[4][5][6][7]. Those additional degrees can be beneficial to the stabilizing action considering that, in the general case, the dynamics about each single body axis are different and are coupled.…”

“…[2,4,5,7]), whereas in other papers it is achieved for Earth (or nadir) pointing spacecraft (see, e.g. [6,8,12,16,17]). In all of the cited papers PD-like control algorithms are employed.…”

“…In [2,4,5,16] the corresponding scalar control gains are determined substantially on a trialand-error basis. In [6,7,12] the scalar gains are selected so to maximize the degree of stability of the closed-loop system. In [8,17] matrix gains are employed and are determined by solving linear quadratic regulator problems.…”

Quaternion versus Rotation Matrix Feedback for Spacecraft Attitude Stabilization Using Magnetorquers

“…Simple control algorithms that achieves attitude stabilization using only magnetorquers, are based on quaternion and attitude rate feedback. It has been shown that such control laws achieves stabilization for both inertial pointing spacecraft [2][3][4][5] and Earth (or nadir) pointing spacecraft [6][7][8][9][10]. However, using quaternion and attitude rate feedback can result in undesired unwinding phenomenon for the spacecraft.…”