Abstract
Solar sails propel using solar radiation pressure, and CNUSAIL-1 is a 3U-sized cube satellite with 4m area solar sail. This paper describes attitude controller and carries out numerical simulations for that cube satellite that is equipped with small solar sail. The satellite must perform nadir pointing maneuver for testing effects of the solar sail with minimum aerodynamic drag in a circular orbit of 700km altitude. For the purpose of nadir pointing operation, B-dot controller and PD quaternion feedback controller are implemented by taking into account three-axis magnetic torquer and reaction wheel as actuator. To verify the feasibility and performance of the proposed controller, the simulations consider external disturbances such as aerodynamic drag, solar radiation pressure and gravity gradient . The simulations show that the satellite can be detumbled within 5 orbit periods from tip-off rate due to ejection from the P-POD, and stabilized within 10 orbit period from the body rate because of sail deployment. Furthermore, the simulations verify that the controller can stabilize the attitude for the nadir-pointing mode when sail is deployed.
Published Version
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