A major challenge of the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn '77 spacecraft was devising a suboptimal attitude controller that could meet the demanding mission requirements. The challenge was met by implementing a discrete stochastic controller for a specially designed onboard computer. The paper describes the design and operation of the controller, based on a simple model of spacecraft dynamics. Two types of cruising modes are considered: inertial cruise, where spacecraft attitude is determined from gyro position outputs, and celestial cruise, where position information is obtained from sun sensors and a star tracker. These two cruise modes under conditions of disturbances were simulated on computer, and the results showed that the controller maintained the spacecraft attitude with low rates. An appendix gives details on the single-step predictor.
Attitude control of Mariner Jupiter-Saturn spacecraft
Symposium on Automatic Control in Space ; 1976 ; Rottach-Egern, Germany
1976-01-01
Miscellaneous
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English
Mariner Jupiter/Saturn Project
NTIS | 1973
Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 navigation strategy
AIAA | 1975
|The Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 mission
NTRS | 1974
|Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 Navigation Strategy
AIAA | 1976
|