A chaotic control method based on the stability criterion (SC method) of deviation linear system is adopted to control the chaotic attitude motion of a magnetic rigid spacecraft with internal damping. The spacecraft is moving in a circular orbit under the combined action of the gravitational field and the magnetic field. The effects of part of the parameters in the spacecraft attitude motion equation are discussed,and the way of these parameters leading to chaos is proposed by period doubling bifurcation or inverse period doubling bifurcation. When the selection of the parameters leads to chaotic attitude motion,by using SC method,the chaotic motion is controlled to the period4 orbit,and can be converted to period1,2,4 orbits flexibly. In addition,the influences of the control parameters on control effect are analyzed, and the ranges of the input perturbation and the control parameter to different orbits are obtained,respectively. The simulation results show that the SC method can realize the flexible control of chaotic attitude motion between the desired periodic orbits,and the values of the input perturbation are small,the control speed is fast and the precision is high,verifying the effectiveness of the suggested method in the control of spacecraft chaotic attitude motion.