Systems Engineering - ATI

Attitude Determination and Control
Summary
This four-day course provides a detailed
introduction to spacecraft attitude estimation and
control. This course emphasizes many practical
aspects of attitude control system design but with a
solid theoretical foundation. The principles of operation
and characteristics of attitude sensors and actuators
are discussed. Spacecraft kinematics and dynamics
are developed for use in control design and system
simulation. Attitude determination methods are
discussed in detail, including TRIAD, QUEST, Kalman
filters. Sensor alignment and calibration is also
covered. Environmental factors that affect pointing
accuracy and attitude dynamics are presented.
Pointing accuracy, stability (smear), and jitter
definitions and analysis methods are presented. The
various types of spacecraft pointing controllers and
design, and analysis methods are presented. Students
should have an engineering background including
calculus and linear algebra. Sufficient background
mathematics are presented in the course but is kept to
the minimum necessary.
Instructor
Dr. Mark E. Pittelkau is an independent consultant.
He was previously with the Applied Physics Laboratory,
Orbital Sciences Corporation, CTA Space Systems,
and Swales Aerospace. His early career at the Naval
Surface Warfare Center involved target tracking, gun
pointing control, and gun system calibration, and he
has recently worked in target track fusion. His
experience in satellite systems covers all phases of
design and operation, including conceptual desig,
implemen-tation, and testing of attitude control
systems, attitude and orbit determination, and attitude
sensor alignment and calibration, control-structure
interaction analysis, stability and jitter analysis, and
post-launch support. His current interests are precision
attitude determination, attitude sensor calibration, orbit
determination, and formation flying. Dr. Pittelkau
earned the Bachelor's and Ph. D. degrees in Electrical
Engineering at Tennessee Technological University
and the Master's degree in EE at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University.
What You Will Learn
• Characteristics and principles of operation of attitude
sensors and actuators.
• Kinematics and dynamics.
• Principles of time and coordinate systems.
• Attitude determination methods, algorithms, and
limits of performance;
• Pointing accuracy, stability (smear), and jitter
definitions and analysis methods.
• Various types of pointing control systems and
hardware necessary to meet particular control
objectives.
• Back-of-the envelope design techniques.
February 28 - March 3, 2011
Chantilly, Virginia
$1790 (8:30am - 4:00pm)
"Register 3 or More & Receive $100 00 each
Off The Course Tuition."
Recent attendee comments ...
“Very thorough!”
“Relevant and comprehensive.”
Course Outline
1. Kinematics. Vectors, direction-cosine
matrices, Euler angles, quaternions, frame
transformations, and rotating frames. Conversion
between attitude representations.
2. Dynamics. Rigid-body rotational dynamics,
Euler's equation. Slosh dynamics. Spinning spacecraft
with long wire booms.
3. Sensors. Sun sensors, Earth Horizon sensors,
Magnetometers, Gyros, Allan Variance & Green
Charts, Angular Displacement sensors, Star Trackers.
Principles of operation and error modeling.
4. Actuators. Reaction and momentum wheels,
dynamic and static imbalance, wheel configurations,
magnetic torque rods, reaction control jets. Principles
of operation and modeling.
5. Environmental Disturbance Torques.
Aerodynamic, solar pressure, gravity-gradient,
magnetic dipole torque, dust impacts, and internal
disturbances.
6. Pointing Error Metrics. Accuracy, Stability
(Smear), and Jitter. Definitions and methods of design
and analysis for specification and verification of
requirements.
7. Attitude Control. B-dot and H X B rate damping
laws. Gravity-gradient, spin stabilization, and
momentum bias control. Three-axis zero-momentum
control. Controller design and stability. Back-of-the
envelope equations for actuator sizing and controller
design. Flexible-body modeling, control-structure
interaction, structural-mode (flex-mode) filters, and
control of flexible structures. Verification and
Validation, and Polarity and Phase testing.
8. Attitude Determination. TRIAD and QUEST
algorithms. Introduction to Kalman filtering. Potential
problems and reliable solutions in Kalman filtering.
Attitude determination using the Kalman filter.
Calibration of attitude sensors and gyros.
9. Coordinate Systems and Time. J2000 and
ICRF inertial reference frames. Earth Orientation,
WGS-84, geodetic, geographic coordinates. Time
systems. Conversion between time scales. Standard
epochs. Spacecraft time and timing.
40 – Vol. 104 Register online at www.ATIcourses.com or call ATI at 888.501.2100 or 410.956.8805