Electrical-Power Constrained Attitude Steering

AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference, August 20-24, 2017, Stevenson, WA. Paper number: AAS 17-774wheel array over the course of a slewing maneuver by steering the attitude ofthe spacecraft, in situations where it is not possible to command the reaction wheel torque directly. To explore this avenue, a set ofconstrained nonlinear non-smooth LI optimal-control problems are formulated and solved. It is demonstrated that energy consumption, dissipative losses, and peak-power load, of the reaction-wheel array can each be reduced substantially, by controlling the input to the attitude control system through attitude steering, thereby avoiding software modifications to flight software