Dynamics and attitude control of space-based synthetic aperture radar

Abstract This work tackles the problem of attitude control of a space-based synthetic aperture radar with a deployable reflector antenna, representing a lightly damped uncertain vibratory system with highly nonlinear dynamics. A control strategy based on two identifiable in-orbit vector parameters is proposed to make the robust controller less conservative. The first parameter is used in the feedforward loop to achieve a trade-off between the energy efficiency of maneuvers and the amplitudes of the oscillatory response. The feedback loop utilizes the second parameter to accurately handle the controller-structure interactions by adaptive notch filters. The notch filters are included in the augmented plant at the design stage to guarantee closed-loop robustness against disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, and parametric uncertainty. The system’s robustness and specified requirements are confirmed by formal criteria and numerical simulations using a realistic model of the flexible spacecraft.