Adaptive Minimal Control Synthesis for Satellite Attitude Control in Presence of Propellant Sloshing and Flexible Appendices

In a scenario of always more complex and demanding space missions, enhanced attitude control systems play a key role for satellite design and capabilities improvement. In this paper, an adaptive and robust solution to the pointing angle tracking problem under mixed sources of disturbances is presented. A valid simplified parametric model, of a single axis satellite dynamics, is firstly introduced and discussed, to the objective of effectively accounting for propellant slosh and flexible appendices torque perturbations. The control problem is subsequently solved with a model reference adaptive control approach, namely the Minimal Control Synthesis (MCS). Theoretical fundamentals, architecture implementation and final tuning are reported. A subset of the extensive validation campaign performed is presented and discussed to demonstrate the impressive robustness and performance level reached by the proposed scheme. Limitations and future perspective to tackle them conclude the paper.