Fault Tolerant Attitude Synchronization Control during Formation Flying

It is necessary for precise satellite formations to keep each satellite in accurate relative attitude synchronization and to maintain relative angular velocity synchronization. An adaptive fuzzy terminal sliding mode control is proposed for a formation flying tracking system which includes acquisition, tracking, and pointing. The relative attitude of the leader and follower spacecraft under gravity gradient torque and external periodic disturbances is controlled by four reaction wheels. First, a terminal sliding mode controller is used to obtain stable and fast tracking. Then, the adaptive fuzzy logic system is used to approximate and learn the system uncertainty with the online fault and time-varied external disturbances. The system is proved to be stable, and the parameters are proved to be bounded under the control scheme, using a Lyapunov methodology. Finally, simulation results (under actuator faults like wheel failure and wheel degradation) show that the proposed control method has the advantages of high tracking accuracy, low computation load, robustness, and ease of engineering application.