A Nonlinear Programming Approach for Optimal Large-Angle Attitude Control of Rigid Spacecrafts by Momentum Transfer

The optimal large-angle reoriented maneuvering control (OLRMC) problem of a rigid spacecraft by three orthogonal momentum wheels with free final slewing time is investigated in this paper. The performance index to be minimized is defined as a combination of the time of maneuver and the integral squared sum of control torques. By utilizing an iterative procedure, this control problem is formulated and solved as a constrained nonlinear programming (NLP) one. In this novel method, the count of control steps is fixed initially and the sampling period is treated as a variable in the optimization process. An approach to find the initial feasible solutions of the NLP problem is also proposed. To show the feasibility of the proposed method, simulation results are included for illustration.