Hardware Simulations of Spacecraft Attitude Synchronization Using Lyapunov-Based Controllers

In the near future, space missions with multiple spacecraft are expected to replace traditional missions with a single large spacecraft. These spacecraft formation flying missions generally require precise knowledge of relative position and attitude between neighboring agents. In this study, among the several challenging issues, we focus on the technique to control spacecraft attitude synchronization in formation. We develop a number of nonlinear control schemes based on the Lyapunov stability theorem and considering special situations: full-state feedback control, full-state feedback control with unknown inertia parameters, and output feedback control without angular velocity measurements. All the proposed controllers offer absolute and relative control using reaction wheel assembly for both regulator and tracking problems. In addition to the numerical simulations, an air-bearing-based hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system is used to verify the proposed control laws in real-time hardware environments. The pointing errors converge to \(0.5{^{\circ }}\) with numerical simulations and to \(2{^{\circ }}\) using the HIL system. Consequently, both numerical and hardware simulations confirm the performance of the spacecraft attitude synchronization algorithms developed in this study.