UC Berkeley

Scientific exploration of near-earth space and high altitudes within earth's atmosphere greatly enhance our knowledge of how the earth functions and how it interacts with the sun. These missions have the platforms and need the controller to achieve the specific attitude necessary with limited sensors and actuators. This dissertation introduces the dynamics of the scientific platforms with suitable control rules under various environments and constraints.

Three kinds of science platforms are discussed here: (1) the spin rate and the attitude control of a rigid body, (2) the strategy for the stabilization and the modeling of a multibody system in the space, and(3) the pointing control of a multibody system at the stratosphere. This dissertation also provides the designs and verification procedures for the control software in the embedded system. The simulations and experiments are presented to verify the performance of the attitude controllers.