ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

Achieving precision pointing performance plays a decisive role in future space missions. Pointing performance is specified by a set of requirements consisting of absolute, time-windowed, and stability errors categorized in pointing error indices APE, RPE, MPE, PDE and PRE. The analysis of those pointing error indices in time-simulations is straight forward as error data series can be described by standard statistics. However, for design purposes there exists no method with which control loop performance can directly be optimized in terms of time-windowed and stability pointing error indices. This paper describes a control design approach mapping pointing error index requirements into closed loop specifications, such that control loop performance can be optimized with a systematic procedure according to the design objectives. The approach is embedded into the H? closed loop shaping framework. Thus, besides pointing error index performance, various other design objectives can be treated simultaneously with one matrix criterion, also in terms of robustness.