Optimal motion planning for a rigid spacecraft with two momentum wheels using Quasi-Newton method

An optimal motion planning scheme based on the quasi-Newton method is proposed for a rigid spacecraft with two momentum wheels. A cost functional is introduced to incorporate the control energy, the final state errors and the constraints on states. The motion planning for determining control inputs to minimize the cost functional is formulated as a nonlinear optimal control problem. Using the control parametrization, one can transform the infinite dimensional optimal control problem to a finite dimensional one that is solved via the quasi-Newton methods for a feasible trajectory which satisfies the nonholonomic constraint. The optimal motion planning scheme was applied to a rigid spacecraft with two momentum wheels. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed optimal motion planning scheme.