Fault-Tolerant Spacecraft Attitude Determination using State Estimation Techniques

--The extended and unscented Kalman filter, and the particle filter provide a robust framework for fault-tolerant attitude estimation on spacecraft. This paper explores how each filter performs for a large satellite in a low earth orbit. Additionally, various techniques, built on these filters, for fault detection, isolation and recovery from erroneous sensor measurements, are analyzed. Key results from this analysis include filter performance for various fault modes. Communication satellites, satellites conducting scientific research, and reentry vehicles are all examples of spacecraft that need to predict and control their attitude.