A robust control approach for maneuvering a flexible spacecraft

In the paper, a robust control mechanism is presented to maneuver a flexible spacecraft with the deflection reduction during large slewing operation at the same time. For deflection reduction and maneuvering of the flexible spacecraft, a control mechanism is developed with the application of stochastic optimal sliding-mode control, a linear tracking model and input shaping technique. A start-coast-stop maneuver is employed as a slewing strategy. It is shown that the control mechanism with the strategic maneuver results in better performance and is more efficient than rigid-body-like maneuver, by applying to the Spacecraft Control Laboratory Experiment (SCOLE) system in a space environment.