Optimal control of a rigid spacecraft programmed motion without angular velocity measurements

This paper considers the problem of optimal controlling a spacecraft programmed motion without its angular velocity measurements. An optimal control law that stabilizes this programmed motion and minimizes the cost that transfers the spacecraft from arbitrary initial state to the programmed state is obtained as a function of the kinematics attitude parameters and their estimates as well as the angle of programmed rotation. The stabilizing properties of the proposed controllers are proved using Liapunov techniques. Numerical simulation study is presented.