Inertia-free attitude stabilization for flexible spacecraft with active vibration suppression

This paper addresses the inertia-free attitude control problem for flexible spacecraft in the presence of inertia uncertainties, external disturbances, actuator faults, measurement errors, and input magnitude and rate constraints (MRCs). By analyzing the influence of external disturbances, faulty signals, and actual inertial matrix, a lumped disturbance is reconstructed to facilitate the controller design. Then, a new intermediate observer is developed to estimate the attitude and modal information and the lumped disturbance. The Lyapunov stability analysis shows that the developed controller can achieve the objectives of the attitude stabilization and vibration suppression with input MRCs. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control method.