AIAA 2000-4044 Detumbling and Partial Attitude Stabilization of a Rigid Spacecraft Under Actuator Failure

We consider the problem of attitude and angular velocity stabilization of a rigid spacecraft subject to a single actuator failure. Only two pairs of gas jet actuators are available to perform the control objectives. Various controllers have been proposed for this problem in the case that the spacecraft is axisymmetric about one of its axis. In this paper the spacecraft under consideration is a rigid body that is almost axisymmetric about its body 3-axis. A small parameter ε gives a measure of the non-symmetry of the spacecraft about this axis. A control law is introduced for a special subsystem of the complete dynamical system under consideration. This control law can be used either alone for detumbling maneuvers of nearly symmetric spacecraft, or as part of a more general control strategy to stabilize the complete attitude of non-symmetric spacecraft. Numerical examples demonstrate the success of the theoretical developments.