ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

The escalation of platforms flexibility associated to stringent pointing specifications require to synthesize high performances control solutions demanding for reliable & efficient tuning tools to minimize industrial tuning efforts and costs. Aware of these upcoming challenges, the investigation of advanced control techniques has been considered as a key priority by the French & European space agencies the past few years. A technological research roadmap has been conducted with particular efforts to mature robust control methods up to successful industrial handover. This paper demonstrates the capability of state-of-the-art non-smooth H-infinity optimisation techniques to efficiently address the control design problem of highly flexible satellite platforms. Two design methodologies have been implemented and demonstrated on a challenging benchmark, i.e, a telecommunication satellite of the Eurostar E3000 family. First, a multi-model approach considering a limited set of plant dynamics is presented. Second, a structured µ-synthesis technique allowing to systematically handle the robustness properties is proposed. Nowadays industrialized by Airbus Defence and Space, structured H-infinity design methods have successfully been applied to tune high performances controllers (e.g., Telecommunication satellites, BepiColombo and Rosetta orbit controllers).