Fault-tolerant attitude tracking control of combined spacecraft with reaction wheels under prescribed performance

Capture and control of a failed spacecraft can be achieved by a space manipulator installed in a service spacecraft. After this target has been captured, the combined spacecraft must be controlled in a prescribed way. The attitude attacking control of the combined spacecraft system is one major challenge since the mass properties of the whole spacecraft system and configuration matrix of the reaction wheels change, especially when actuator fault occurs. In this paper, a nonlinear disturbance-observer-based fault-tolerant attitude control scheme is developed for the combined spacecraft with prescribed performance. Firstly, an approach is given to reconstruct the attitude tracking dynamics of the combined spacecraft with reaction wheels. Then, a fault-tolerant controller, based on dynamic surface method and nonlinear extended state observer, is developed whereby performance in the light of convergence time, stability and accuracy with inertia uncertainty, actuator saturation and external disturbance can be prescribed. Finally, comparative simulations in both actuator faults and actuator fault-free cases are conducted to show the superiority of the developed attitude tracking control method.