This paper concerns an articulated space robot with flexible links. The equations of its motion are derived by means of the Lagrangian mechanics. Assuming that magnitude of elastic motions are relatively small, the perturbation approach is taken to separate the original equations of motion into linear and nonlinear equations. Th effect the desired payload motion, open loop control inputs are first determined based on the nonlinear equations. One the other hand, in order to reduce the positional errors during the maneuver, vibration suppression is actively done with a feedforward control for disturbance cancellation to some extent. Additionally, for performance robustness against residual disturbance, an LQ control modified to have a prescribed degree of stability is applied based on the linear equations. Measurement equations are formulated to be used for the maximum likelihood estimator to reconstruct states from the original robot equations of motion. Finally, numerical simulations show effectiveness of the proposed control design scheme.