A special case of spacecraft optimal attitude control

The problem of optimal control of a spacecraft reorientation from an arbitrary initial attitude to a prescribed angular attitude is studied. The reorientation time is given. The case when the quadratic norm of the angular velocity vector of the spacecraft is minimized is studied. Using the necessary optimality conditions in the form of Pontryagin??s maximum principle and the quaternion method for spacecraft motion control, an analytical solution of this problem is obtained. Formal equations are derived and expressions for the optimal control program are obtained. For a dynamically symmetric spacecraft, the angular velocity is obtained in the analytical form. Results of the mathematical simulation of the spacecraft dynamics under the optimal control are presented that demonstrate the practical usefulness of the proposed algorithm for the spacecraft attitude control.