Abstract: The chaotic planar motion of rigid spacecraft on an elliptic orbit in the gravitational field with air drag and internal damping and its control are investigated.Research on chaotic attitude motion of spacecraft can not only provide nonlinear dynamics with engineering background, but also furnish the design of spacecraft with a new view point. Controlling chaos is a new frontier of nonlinear dynamics and control engineering. The mathematical model of attitude motion of the spacecraft with a actuator is deri...