Controllability analysis and periodical antenna pointing attitude control of a single rotor spacecraft

This paper discusses an application of nonlinear controllability theory to the attitude control problem of a spacecraft with single reaction wheel and nonzero initial angular momentum. The target system is a model of actuators failure and has strong nonlinearity. Firstly, the controllability is checked to reveal the non-controllable situation. After that the control objective set to coincide a body-fixed antenna with a desired direction periodically. In order to achieve the control objective in the controllable region, the controller based on the input output linearization is designed. The validity of the proposed controller is confirmed in numerical simulation.