SSC26 · The paper

Generalized Attitude Control for Small Spacecraft

Patrick McKeen1, Niclas Scheuer2, Kerri Cahoy1

1 MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics · 2 ETH Zürich Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering

Paper SSC26-P2-54, 40th Annual Small Satellite Conference, Salt Lake City UT, August 2026.

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Abstract

Many classical attitude-control designs assume unconstrained torque or are developed for a fixed actuator set, requiring redesign for each new spacecraft and its goals. We present a framework that treats the control law as a black box and places goal formulation, compensation, torque allocation, and momentum management in a common adapter around it, so a law from the literature can be adapted across heterogeneous and underactuated actuator sets without reimplementation.

Before any simulation, a controllability analysis screens whether a given actuator set can meet a goal. Over a full orbit the geomagnetic field sweeps the magnetorquer torque envelope through all three axes, so magnetorquers alone are controllable for full attitude in the orbit-averaged sense. Reduced-attitude objectives such as camera-boresight pointing relax the requirement further.

The framework is validated in 100-trial Monte Carlo campaigns across configurations from magnetorquer-only to three-wheel, including the 3MTQ+1RW hybrid. Because goal, law, and allocation are separated, a shortfall can be charged to hardware geometry, control law, or allocator strategy rather than to the controller as a whole.

Cite it

@inproceedings{mckeen2026generalized,
  title     = {Generalized Attitude Control for Small Spacecraft},
  author    = {McKeen, Patrick and Scheuer, Niclas and Cahoy, Kerri},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 40th Annual Small Satellite Conference},
  number    = {SSC26-P2-54},
  year      = {2026},
  address   = {Salt Lake City, UT},
}

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