Minimum-Time Spacecraft Attitude Motion Planning Using Objective Alternation in Derivative-Free Optimization

This work presents an approach to spacecraft attitude motion planning which guarantees rest-to-rest maneuvers while satisfying pointing constraints. Attitude is represented on the group of three dimensional rotations. The angular velocity is expressed as weighted sum of some basis functions, and the weights are obtained by solving a constrained minimization problem in which the objective is the maneuvering time. However, the analytic expressions of objective and constraints of this minimization problem are not available. To solve the problem despite this obstacle, we propose to use a derivative-free approach based on sequential penalty. Moreover, to avoid local minima traps during the search, we propose to alternate phases in which two different objective functions are pursued. The control torque derived from the spacecraft inverse dynamics is continuously differentiable and vanishes at its endpoints. Results on practical cases taken from the literature demonstrate advantages over existing approaches.