SMM attitude control recovery

A description is given of the way in which the Modular Attitude Control System (MACS) onboard computer of the NASA Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) laboratory was reprogrammed, to restore attitude control for the SMM, after fuse failures permanently disabled all three of the MACS primary reaction wheels. Algorithms were developed which provided both a thermal- and power-safe, spin-stabilized mode and three-axis sun pointing, using the damaged primary wheels' backup skew wheel in a momentum-bias control scheme. Magnetic torquing was used in these algorithms for angular momentum vector magnitude and directional control.