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The Minimum Necessary Number of Thrusters for Three-Dimensional

Satellite Attitude Control

Conference Paper · December 2009

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 The Fourth KAIST - Kyushu Univ. Symposium on AeroSpace Engineering

The Minimum Necessary Number of Thrusters for Three-Dimensional

Satellite Attitude Control

Yasuhiro YOSHIMURA and Shinji HOKAMOTO

Guidance and Control Lab. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Keywords: Attitude Control, Thruster, Nonholonomic System, Minimum Necessary Number

1 Introduction
Thrusters can be used for the position and attitude control of satellite systems. For practical satellite
systems, the force directions of the thrusters are fixed with respect to the satellite. Sometimes a satellite
may be equipped with more than 10 thrusters to control the satellite’s position and attitude. It is obvious
that this number of thrusters is more than the minimum necessary to control the satellite’s position and
attitude. However, it is not clear how many thrusters are the minimum necessary to control a satellite. The
purpose of this study is to clarify the minimum number of thrusters necessary to control the satellite’s
position and attitude angle precisely, and to develop the control procedures for a fewer number of thrusters.
As a result of this study, we may significantly reduce the number of thrusters for practical satellites, even
when considering some of them as backups. Furthermore, the developed control technique is useful when
some thrusters have failed.
This paper is preliminary as it deals with only three-dimensional attitude control of a satellite. Since
thrusters generate forces in unilateral directions, we apply a mathematical theorem to clarify the minimum
number and their configuration of thrusters necessary to control the three-dimensional attitude. There are
numerous researches on attitude stabilization of a rigid body satellite. Crouch [1] reports that less than three
torque inputs can control the three-dimensional attitude of a rigid satellite. It has stimulated researchers’
interests in underactuated system, and several control laws have been proposed (for example, references [2,
3]). However, they assume to utilize CMGs or a pair of gas-jets as actuators.

2 Thruster Configuration
From the result of Crouch [1], if two control torques can be generated independently about its two
principal axes without directly influencing its third axis motion, the three-dimensional attitude of a satellite
can be controlled. Thus, we discuss in this study thrusters’ configuration that satisfies the above condition.
Consider a satellite-fixed coordinate whose origin is placed at the mass center of the satellite. First, for
simplicity, we assume that two thrusters are placed parallel to a principal axis , as seen in Fig.1. Thus,
the two thrusters do not generate any torque about -axis. Expressing the position of the thruster force
in the , coordinates as and , we can write the relation of the torque generated by the thrusters

as follows.

(1)
 The Fourth KAIST - Kyushu Univ. Symposium on AeroSpace Engineering

Fig.1 Thruster Configuration (Parallel to z-axis)

If any ratio of control torques can be generated by the two thrusters, those thrusters can control the
satellite’s three attitude motions. It should be noted that the vector must be positive.
The condition to exist a positive solution is given by the following theorem.

Theorem Minkowski-Farkas [4]

Given matrix , , the following conditions are equivalent.
1.
2.

From the above theorem, Eq. (1) is equivalent to the following condition.

(2)

This condition can be depicted in two-dimensional vector field, as follows. The left hand relation means
that the scalar products between and each column vector of should be positive, i.e., the angle
between them is less than 90 degrees. Hence, the area of the vector satisfying the left hand side relation
can be drawn as Fig. 2. In the same way, the area of the vector satisfying the right hand side relation
can be drawn as Fig. 3.

required third thruster

Fig.2 The area of vector Fig.3 The area of vector Fig.4 The required thruster

Therefore, to generate arbitrary ratio of control torques , the third thruster is necessary and it must be

placed to be opposite to a direction in the area specified in Fig.3, as shown in Fig.4.

Next, we extend the result for three thrusters in parallel configuration to arbitrary configuration. In this
case, each thruster generates torques about all three axes, and the relation is written as follows.
(3)

where expresses the configuration of the three thruster. The area formulated by these three thrusters
indicates a triangular pyramid illustrated in Fig.5. This figure implies that generating an arbitrary control
torques in the plane is impossible, because the origin of the satellite fixed coordinates is placed on a

vertex of the triangular pyramid.

 The Fourth KAIST - Kyushu Univ. Symposium on AeroSpace Engineering

x y

Fig. 5 The area formulated by three thrusters Fig. 6 The area formulated by four thrusters

When there are four thrusters, we have four choices to select three thrusters from four of them. Thus,
there are four triangular pyramids around the origin, and they can formulate a combined a large triangular
pyramid illustrated in Fig.6. Therefore, the four thrusters can generates any ratio of control torques

around the satellite’s mass center.

3 Conclusion
The discussion of the section 2 implies the following conclusions.
1. At least four thrusters are necessary to control the three-dimensional attitude motion of a satellite” in
a general thruster configuration.
2. Three thrusters can NEVER control the three-dimensional attitude motion, except the special
configuration that all of them are placed parallel.
Discussion to clarify the minimum number of thrusters necessary to control the satellite’s position and
attitude angle simultaneously is under study.

References
[1] P.E. Crouch, “Spacecraft Attitude Control and Stabilization: Applications of Geometric Control Theory
to Rigid Body Models”, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. AC-29, No.4, pp. 321-331
1984.
[2] P. Tsiotras and V. Doumtchenko, “Control of Spacecraft Subject to Actuator Failures State-of-the-Art
and Open Problems”, J. Astro Sci. pp. 337-358, 2000.
[3] P. Morin and C. Samson, “Time-varying Exponential Stabilization of the Attitude of a Rigid Spacecraft
with Two Controls”, in Proceedings of the 34th Conference on Decision and Control. pp. 3988-3993,
1995.
[4] C. G. Broyden, “A simple algebraic proof of Farkas’s lemma and related theorems”, Optimization
Method and Software, Vol.8, Issue 3&4, pp. 185-199, 1998.

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