Guidance and Attitude Control of Rockets with Fixed Impulsive Forces

A novel approach to motion control of rockets using impulsive forces with fixed amplitude and duration is introduced. Continuous control laws are developed for guidance and attitude control of rigid bodies followed by the derivation of equivalent discrete time fixed amplitude and duration impulses normally provided by thrusters. The approach is then applied to a rocket guidance and attitude control problem with measurement errors, feedback time delay and random initial pose errors. Monte Carlo simulations are used to validate the controller performance with limited number of both reusable and single-use thrusters.