New results on robust state estimation in spacecraft attitude control

In this paper, an integrated attitude estimation and control algorithm is addressed and implemented to a spacecraft dynamical model subject to observation (sensor) losses. Rigid body equations of motion for modeling and control of spacecraft model is obtained from both kinematic and dynamic equations. An earlier version of the so-called closed-loop estimation scheme presented in [9] is extended and implemented to the spacecraft model subject to observation losses. Compensated observation signals are reconstructed based on linear prediction subsystem and utilized at measurement update steps. Simulation results verify that the proposed robust estimation algorithm applied to the rigid body spacecraft model significantly outperforms existing open-loop filtering algorithms and could attack many other practical applications with intermittent output measurement losses.