For the large angle attitude control of large-scale spacecraft with uncertainties in the inertial matrices of spacecraft and the external disturbance torques, attitude tracking control laws are designed based on higher-order sliding mode control technique. With the second-order sliding mode control used in the design, the robustness of the system with respect to uncertainties and external disturbances is improved, and the chattering phenomena are attenuated. For the designed controllers, numerical simulations are carried out, and compared with first-order sliding mode controllers. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.