This paper presents the design of attitude control systems for autonomous spacecraft subject to noisy measurements from sensors, external, and internal disturbances. The objective is to perform slew manoeuvres and maintain pointing stability while guaranteeing fast convergence and high performance. For slew manoeuvres, a Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) is designed to achieve improved convergence while imposing constraints on the actuators. For pointing stability, however, Linear Quadratic Regulators (LQRs) are proposed based on the linearization about the null error. The pair of controllers is coupled to perform, in sequence, a slew manoeuvre towards the desired pointing (nadir or inertial) followed by high performance pointing stability. The success of the proposed solutions is measured by analysing, resorting to realistic numerical simulations, the capacity of the NMPC to achieve the stopping criterion in minimal time and effort and of the LQR to drive and maintain the attitude error to a maximum of 36 arcsec, both of which are achieved.