Adaptive Sliding Mode for Agile Attitude Tracking in a High-Precision Modelled VLEO Environment
Pierantonio BERTUCCIO, Vincenzo Maria CANNAVALE, Mattia ILLIANO, Tobia Armando LA MARCA, Mauro MANCINI, Maria Daniela GRAZIANO, Elisa CAPELLO, Michele GRASSI
Abstract. This paper presents a novel Sliding Mode Control (SMC) control formulated on the special orthogonal group SO(3) for spacecraft attitude control in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). The approach addresses nonlinear rotation geometry and environmental disturbances without the singularities or redundancy of traditional attitude representations. A key innovation is the direct adaptive law that dynamically adjusts sliding manifold parameters, reducing reaching time and guiding the system toward desired dynamics once sliding is established. The controller is validated using the high-fidelity high-precision orbit propagator which accounts for the main environmental disturbances. Preliminary results demonstrate accurate attitude tracking performance in realistic maneuvering scenarios, confirming the controller’s effectiveness for the challenging VLEO environment.
Keywords
VLEO, Spacecraft Attitude Control, Sliding Mode Control, Adaptive Control
Published online 7/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Pierantonio BERTUCCIO, Vincenzo Maria CANNAVALE, Mattia ILLIANO, Tobia Armando LA MARCA, Mauro MANCINI, Maria Daniela GRAZIANO, Elisa CAPELLO, Michele GRASSI, Adaptive Sliding Mode for Agile Attitude Tracking in a High-Precision Modelled VLEO Environment, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 1083-1088, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-187
The article was published as article 187 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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