Design and Flight Test Results of Robust Attitude Controller for the ETS-VIII Spacecraft

Abstract This paper reports the flight test results of robust attitude controller for Engineering Test Satellite VIII (ETS-VIII) spacecraft. The main mission of ETS-VIII is to support next-generation mobile digital communications, and for this purpose it is equipped with two large deployable antenna reflectors and a pair of large solar paddles that rotate around the pitch axis. For the spacecraft, the authors have proposed and demonstrated several control methods based on the advanced control theories for the linear parameter varying multi-input multi-output system. The aim is to develop a baseline for future controller design technology for this class of satellite instead of existing classical PID control laws. This paper describes the on-orbit experiment results and compares these controllers performance.