In this paper, the problem of controlling the attitude of a CubeSat in low Earth orbit using only the environmental torques is considered. The CubeSat is equipped with a Drag Maneuvering Device (DMD) that enables the spacecraft to modulate its experienced aerodynamic and gravity gradient torques. An adaptive controller is designed to achieve attitude tracking of the spacecraft in the presence of uncertain parameters such as the atmospheric density, drag and lift coefficients, and the time-varying location of the Center of Mass (CoM). The proposed controller also accounts for modeling inaccuracy of the inertia matrix of the spacecraft. A Lyapunov-based analysis is used to prove that the quaternion-based attitude trajectory tracking error is uniformly ultimately bounded. The designed controller is also examined through numerical simulations for a spacecraft with time-varying uncertain drag, lift coefficients and CoM location parameters and the NRLMSISE-00 model for the atmospheric density.

在本文中，考虑了仅使用环境扭矩来控制低地球轨道上的CubeSat姿态的问题。CubeSat配备了阻力操纵装置（DMD），使航天器能够调节其经验的空气动力学和重力梯度扭矩。设计了一种自适应控制器，以在存在不确定参数（例如大气密度，阻力和升力系数以及质心（CoM）随时间变化的位置）的情况下实现航天器的姿态跟踪。提出的控制器还考虑了航天器惯性矩阵的建模误差。基于李雅普诺夫的分析被用来证明基于四元数的姿态轨迹跟踪误差是最终均匀的。