Adaptive Appointed‐Time Model Predictive Control for Spacecraft Attitude Tracking With Prescribed Performance

The spacecraft attitude tracking problem with prescribed performance in the presence of environmental disturbance, model uncertainty, actuator faults, and saturation presents a significant challenge. Under these tough conditions, this paper proposes an adaptive model predictive control (MPC) with a novel appointed‐time performance function (APF) constraint to achieve high‐performance attitude tracking trajectories with appointed‐time convergence. Firstly, within the proposed MPC framework, an optimal attitude trajectory is obtained, respecting the performance boundary and actuator limitations. Next, by introducing a contraction constraint via prescribed performance auxiliary sliding mode control (SMC), the recursive feasibility and closed‐loop stability of MPC are rigorously demonstrated. Additionally, the function‐adaptive law is employed to estimate and compensate the total disturbances. Finally, simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed adaptive appointed‐time prescribed performance MPC algorithm.