Worst-Case Pointing Performance Analysis for Large Flexible Spacecraft

TL;DR

This paper introduces PELIB, a MATLAB/SIMULINK tool for analyzing worst-case pointing performance of flexible spacecraft, incorporating uncertainties and enabling comparison with European standards.

Contribution

The paper presents PELIB, an extension to SDT, allowing for comprehensive worst-case pointing analysis including uncertainties, which enhances existing European space industry verification tools.

Findings

PELIB successfully analyzed a spacecraft with flexible solar arrays.

It provided worst-case pointing performance budgets.

Comparison with existing tools validated PELIB's effectiveness.

Abstract

This paper presents a tool, PELIB, developed in MATLAB /SIMULINK environment to perform pointing performance analysis based on European pointing standards. PELIB is designed as an extension of the Satellite Dynamics Toolbox (SDT), which derives the Linear Fractional Transformation (LFT) models of flexible space structures. The addition of PELIB will allow the users of SDT to perform pointing performance analysis of real mission scenarios in the same environment used for control synthesis. PELIB offers as well the possibility to take into account uncertainties in the system. This feature represents an enhancement to the current verification tools available in the European space industry community by providing the worst-case pointing budget. The capabilities of PELIB were demonstrated in a case study involving a spacecraft model with two flexible solar arrays. Several error sources, as well as uncertain parameters, were included in this model. The nominal performance has been investigated using PELIB and compared with the current European reference tool. The worst-case performance is also investigated with the new feature of PELIB to obtain the worst-case performance budget