Modeling and simulation of a cubesat using nonlinear control in an elliptic orbit

In this paper we present dynamics and control of a spacecraft in an elliptic orbit. Our contribution is modeling and determination of the angular velocity of the satellite orbit reference frame using a Local Vertical/Local Horizontal (LVLH) orbit reference frame and an orbit propagator without the constraint of no out of plane motion. A non-linear passivity-based sliding surface controller is derived, uniformly asymptotically stability (UAS) is proven, and the control law is adapted to work for magnetic torquers. Simulations are performed on a CubeSat model showing the performance of our model and controller.