Rigid spacecraft attitude reorientation control using receding horizon optimization

Optimal control for attitude reorientation using receding horizon optimization is discussed in this paper. The attitude kinematics and dynamics of spacecraft are established based on quaternions formulation and Euler's equations. Then the attitude dynamic model which is transformed into the state dependent coefficient form is discretized for deriving the state prediction equations. After that, the receding horizon optimization approach is applied and the attitude control is formulated as a standard quadratic programming problem. Numerical simulations through Matlab are made to validate the effectiveness of the optimization method. As can be shown from the results that the proposed method is effective and the solution to the optimization can be solved in a fast manner.