Identification and Control of NASA´s ACES Structure

In this paper, we present the results of identification and control experiments on NASA´s ACES structure at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The models used for controller design were obtained from identification experiments employing the algorithm Q-Markov Cover. The OVC algorithm used for control design produces a controller minimizing the control energy of the closed-loop system, subject to inequality constraints on each of the output variances. The identified model matches the experiment data of the ACES structure reasonably well. The line of sight pointing errors of the structure is substantially reduced by the controllers.