Finite‐time attitude stabilization for rigid spacecraft

This paper investigates the finite‐time attitude stabilization problem for rigid spacecraft in the presence of inertia uncertainties and external disturbances. Three nonsingular terminal sliding mode (NTSM) controllers are designed to make the spacecraft system converge to its equilibrium point or a region around its equilibrium point in finite time. In addition, these novel controllers are singularity‐free, and the presented adaptive NTSM control (ANTSMC) laws are chattering‐free. A rigorous proof of finite‐time convergence is developed. The proposed ANTSMC algorithms combine NTSM, adaptation and a constant plus power rate reaching law. Because the algorithms require no information about inertia uncertainties and external disturbances, they can be used in practical systems, where such knowledge is typically unavailable. Simulation results support the theoretical analysis.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.