Abstract: In order to reduce the three axis angular momentum accumulation of a satellite with single sided solar panel caused by the aerodynamic torque and the gravitational gradient torque in long term sun pointing mode, the attitude trajectory optimization and tracking control of the satellite are studied. The dynamical model and the kinematical model of the satellite are firstly established. Based on the models, the desired attitude trajectory that minimizes the accumulation of the three axis angular momentum is obtained by using the Gaussian pseudo spectrum method. To track the desired attitude trajectory in the presence of inertia uncertainty and unknown disturbance torque, an adaptive sliding mode control law is proposed. The control gains are tuned by the adaptation laws, and thus no prior knowledge of the upper bound of the system uncertainty is required. Simulation results show that the proposed control law can achieve the sun pointing attitude tracking, and the optimized attitude trajectory can significantly reduce the accumulation of the three axis angular momentum compared with the common sun pointing coordinate system.

Key words: satellite with single sided solar panel, sun pointing mode, trajectory optimization, angular momentum management, attitude tracking control