Distributed Cooperative Reduced Attitude Control for Leader-Following Spacecraft Formation with Directed Communication

For leader-following spacecraft formation with directed communication, a distributed cooperative control protocol is proposed for reduced attitude consensus to ensure that the boresight vectors of all the follower spacecraft converge to that of the leader spacecraft in a perturbed environment. First, a reduced attitude motion equation for the spacecraft in the unit celestial sphere coordinate frame is established. Second, a distributed cooperative virtual control law under the directed communication topology is designed according to the consensus theory. Next, from the virtual control, the ideal angular velocity vector of each follower spacecraft is derived; Taking the error between the angular velocity vector of the follower spacecraft and the corresponding ideal angular velocity vector as a sliding mode variable, a sliding mode surface is constructed. Finally, a distributed cooperative control protocol for the following spacecraft is proposed based on the super twisting sliding mode control method. Numerical simulations are conducted, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed distribution cooperative control protocol.