The purpose of this thesis is to study design of an attitude guidance and control system enabling tracking of non-straight curves/paths on a surface (e.g., Earth) that are accessible (in-view, cloudless etc.) to a satellite with imaging payload. The control system shall consist of actuators (e.g., reaction wheels, magnetorquers, or control moment gyroscopes) and sensors (e.g., star tracker, sun sensors, magnetometer, MEMS gyroscopes etc.). Instead of attitude control of the whole spacecraft body with payload imager fixed to the body, the student may investigate control allocation methods using dedicated pointing mechanisms (e.g. gimbals, spinning wheels), requiring optimization of control resources subject to actuator saturation and dead-zone constraints.
Recommended prerequisites are:
- Solid background in mathematics (linear algebra, calculus and ODEs).
- Good knowledge of coding, either in Python or Matlab.
- Basic orbital mechanics.
- Control theory (linear and/or nonlinear control systems, linear and/or nonlinear observers).
- Numerical optimization (linear programming and quadratic programming).
Suitable for long thesis (60 credits).