Stabilization of the attitude of a rigid spacecraft with external disturbances using finite-time control techniques

In this paper, we discuss the classical problem of attitude stabilization for a rigid spacecraft with external disturbances. Almost all the control laws for attitude stabilization problem in the literature can only guarantee at best exponential convergence of the attitude with infinite settling time. We employ finite-time control techniques including terminal sliding mode approach and continuous finite-time control approach to develop feedback control laws for stabilizing spacecraft attitude in terms of Rodrigues parameters. The attitude of the rigid spacecraft will be stabilized to the origin in finite time in the absence of disturbances and a small region of the origin in the presence of disturbances. Rigorous proof is given. Numerical simulation results show the effectiveness of the method.