On spacecraft magnetic attitude control

© 2018, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved. When using magnetorquers in attitude control system, satellites usually utilize magnetometers to measure the external magnetic field in the satellite environment, to compute the control command to the magnetorquers. This paper presents a magnetic control algorithm that eliminates the need for magnetometers in spacecraft attitude control with magnetorquers. During attitude maneiuvers, the measured system response to torque commands can be used to estimate the magnetic field. A Kalman fiter is used to estimate the magnetic field as well as the spacecraft angular velocities. The measurements are the spacecraft position and angular velocities. A model for the earth magnetic field is assumed available onboard the spacecraft. Model errors as well as measurements errors are simulated in this work. Simulation results show good attitude control performance