Attitude tracking control of E-sail in Earth-Mars transfer using feedback linearization and sliding mode control

For the attitude tracking control of E-sail-based spacecraft in Earth-Mars transfer, a hybrid control method is proposed to handle the strong nonlinearity, coupling and uncertainty in the dynamics of E-sail. The attitude channel of E-sail was decoupled into two SISO linear systems by means of feedback-linearization. Then sliding mode controller was designed based on the theory of decentralized sliding mode control with respect to each attitude channel, so as to obtain robustness to perturbation. Numerical simulation indicates that the proposed control method works properly even if with 10% parameter perturbation in the large angle maneuver of E-sail-based spacecraft, and the E-sail-based spacecraft successfully entered the sphere of influence for Mars with low relative velocity.