Orbital and attitude control of a spacecraft around an asteroid

The objective of this paper is to design an effective control scheme for an asteroid orbiting satellite. The paper first introduces the dynamics formulation of such satellites and then provides a framework for the control system design. The control objective is to achieve a nadir pointing attitude on a circular equatorial orbit. Lyapunov-based nonlinear feedback laws are constructed to control the rotational and translational motion of the satellite so that the control objective is achieved. Computer simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the control laws.