A thrust inversion method for small satellite electric propulsion based on a momentum wheel

Abstract

Electric propulsion, which is an advanced form of thrust production, is widely used in small satellites. Measuring the thrust of electric propulsion in an orbit is difficult because it is very small (μN∼mN). However, the thrust of electric propulsion can be determined by evaluating the change in the speed of a momentum wheel. The contributions of this paper mainly include two aspects: 1) a robust PID controller and 2) a thrust inversion method. The torque of the electric propulsion is regarded as the disturbance torque in this paper. To achieve finite-time attitude stabilization of a satellite during electric propulsion, a robust PID controller is designed. Furthermore, the thrust of the electric propulsion can be determined in the stable attitude of the satellite by only measuring the speed derivative of the momentum wheel. Compared with the traditional thrust inversion method, the designed thrust inversion method is simple and effective and does not use a filtering algorithm. In the HIL experiment, the error rate between the inverted thrust (31.287 μN) and the designed thrust (30 μN) is 4.29%. Most importantly, the thrust inversion method is verified in orbit based on the small satellite APSCO SSS-1, which is consistent with the HIL experimental results and ground test results.