Attitude Determination and Control Training:

Attitude Determination and Control Training Course with Hands-on Exercises (Onsite, Online, and Classroom Live)

This four-day Attitude Determination and Control Training Workshop provides a detailed introduction to spacecraft attitude estimation and control. This Attitude Determination and Control Workshop 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 are kept to the minimum necessary.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• 4 Days of Attitude Determination and Control Training from an Authorized Instructor
• Official Attitude Determination and Control Electronic Courseware Guide
• Certificate of Completion
• 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed4

RESOURCES

Related Courses

• We can adapt this Attitude Determination and Control Training course to your group’s background and work requirements at little to no added cost.
• If you are familiar with some aspects of this Attitude Determination and Control course, we can omit or shorten their discussion.
• We can adjust the emphasis placed on the various topics or build the Attitude Determination and Control Training course around the mix of technologies of interest to you (including technologies other than those included in this outline).
• If your background is nontechnical, we can exclude the more technical topics, include the topics that may be of special interest to you (e.g., as a manager or policy-maker), and present the Attitude Determination and Control course in a manner understandable to lay audiences.

Audience/Target Group:

The target audience for this Attitude Determination and Control course:

• 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.

Objectives:

Upon completion of this Attitude Determination and Control Training Workshop, you will be able to understand hardware specifications, kinematics, dynamics, and pointing error specifications. You will gain a good understanding of attitude determination and attitude sensor calibration. You will also understand the environmental effects of spacecraft pointing, and you will know fundamental principles to design and analyze attitude control algorithms.

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 Attitude Determination and Control Training Workshop, there is some latitude to adjust the content of the course to suit the needs of the students.

Course Syllabus:

Kinematics. Vectors, direction-cosine matrices, Euler angles, quaternions, frame transformations, and rotating frames. Conversion between attitude representations.

Dynamics. Rigid-body rotational dynamics, Euler’s equation. Slosh dynamics. Spinning spacecraft with long wire booms.

Sensors. Sun sensors, Earth Horizon sensors, Magnetometers, Gyros, Allan Variance & Green Charts, Angular Displacement sensors, Star Trackers. Principles of operation and error modeling.

Actuators. Reaction and momentum wheels, dynamic and static imbalance, wheel configurations, magnetic torque rods, and reaction control jets. Principles of operation and modeling.

Environmental Disturbance Torques. Aerodynamic, solar pressure, gravity-gradient, magnetic dipole torque, dust impacts, and internal disturbances.

Pointing Error Metrics. Accuracy, Stability (Smear), and Jitter. Definitions and methods of design and analysis for specification and verification of requirements.

Attitude Control. B-dot and H X B rate damping laws. Gravity-gradient, spin stabilization, and 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, control-structure interaction, structural-mode (flex-mode) filters, and control of flexible structures. Verification and Validation, and Polarity and Phase testing.

Attitude Determination. TRIAD and QUEST algorithms. Introduction to Kalman filtering. Potential problems and reliable solutions in Kalman filtering. Attitude determination using the Kalman filter. Calibration of attitude sensors and gyros.

Coordinate Systems and Time. J2000 and ICRF inertial reference frames. Earth Orientation, WGS-84, geodetic, geographic coordinates. Time systems. Conversion between time scales. Standard epochs. Spacecraft time and timing.

Attitude Determination and Control Training Course Wrap-Up

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