Maximum Hands-Off Attitude Control of a Spacecraft Actuated by Thrusters

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the use of maximum hands-of control for spacecraft attitude control of a spacecraft equipped with thrusters. Other than a more natural choice of actuators than in our previous paper, the Definition of the Lo-norm for a vector of continuous-time signals most suited for this optimal control problem is refined. An extra term is introduced to the cost function to handle the actuator change. We introduce relative sparsity, a concept where sparsity is defined as a function of the control horizon. With this Definition, comparing the sparsity of any given signal is easier. Finally, we show how the relative sparsity of an optimized state trajectory changes with the resolution and constraints of the optimal control problem.