ATI's Attitude Determination & Control course

Summary: This three-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, and Kalman filters. Sensor alignment and calibration are also covered, as well as various types of spacecraft pointing controllers, design and analysis methods. Students should have an engineering background including calculus and linear algebra. Sufficient background mathematics and control theory are presented in the course but is kept to the minimum necessary. Instructor: Dr. Mark E. Pittelkau is a consultant at Aerospace Control Systems Engineering and Research. He was previously with the Applied Physics Laboratory, Orbital Sciences Corporation, CTA Space Systems (now Orbital), and Swales Aerospace. His early career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center involved target tracking, ship and ground vehicle gun pointing stabilization, gun fire control, and gun system calibration. His experience in satellite systems covers all phases of design and operation, including conceptual design, implementation, 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 optimization of attitude maneuvers. Dr. Pittelkau earned the B.S. and Ph. D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Technological University and the M.S. degree in EE from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Topics covered include: Kinematics and dynamics Characteristics and principles of operation of attitude sensors and actuators Pointing accuracy, stability/smear, jitter definitions and analysis methods Environmental effects on spacecraft pointing Various types of attitude control systems and controller design Attitude determination methods, algorithms, and attitude sensor and gyro calibration Inertial reference frames, Earth orientation, and time Because there is more than enough material for a 3-day course, there is some latitude to adjust the content of the course to suite the needs of the students. What You Will Learn: Upon completion of this course you will be able to understand hardware specifications, kinematics and dynamics, and pointing error specifications. You will gain a good understanding of attitude determination and attitude sensor calibration. You will also understand environmental effects on spacecraft pointing, and you will know fundamental principles to design and analyze attitude control algorithms. Who should attend? This course will be most beneficial to attitude control systems engineers and systems engineers who want a more in-depth understanding of attitude determination and control. It is also useful to spacecraft engineers from other subsystems that need to know how the attitude control system affects their subsystem. Seasoned attitude control system engineers may find some topics in the course to be basic, but will find other parts of the course to be informative. Prerequisites: Students should have an engineering background including basic calculus and linear algebra. Course Outline: Kinematics and Attitude Representations: Vectors and vector operations, reference frames, direction-cosine matrices, Euler angles, quaternions. Conversion between attitude representations. Time-varying kinematics. Rigid-Body Dynamics: Rigid-body rotational dynamics, Euler's equation, slosh dynamics. Sensors: Sun sensors, Earth Horizon sensors, Magnetometers, Gyros, Allan variance, Star Trackers. Principles of operation. Sensor error modeling. Actuators: Reaction and momentum wheels, magnetic torque rods, reaction control jets. Principles of operation. Actuator modeling. Environmental Disturbances: Aerodynamic, solar pressure, gravity-gradient, magnetic torque modeling, and dust impacts. Pointing Error Metrics (Accuracy, Displacement, Stability, Jitter): Definitions and methods of design and analysis, and for specification and verification of requirements. Attitude Control: B-dot and H X B rate damping laws, Yo-Yo despin, Spin stabilization, Gravity-gradient stabilization, 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 and flex-mode filters. Phasing and Polarity Tests: Common problems in testing. Test philosophy. Attitude Determination: Single-frame methods (TRIAD, QUEST). Kalman filtering basics with simple illustrative examples. Computational methods for Kalman filtering. Attitude determination. Attitude Sensor Calibration: Attitude-independent methods, Gimbal calibration, Attitude-dependent and Kalman filtering methods including Gyro calibration. Time and Coordinate frame definitions: (optional section) Time metrics, ITRS and J2000 Inertial Coordinate Systems; Mean-of-Date, True-of-Date, Earth-Centered-Earth-Fixed coordinates; Orbit and Attitude frames. Tuition: Tuition for this four-day course is $1690 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Register Now Without Obligation