Abstract
This paper presents the design, development, and pre-launch characterization of the ESTCube-1 Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS). The design driver for the ADCS has been the mission requirement to spin up the satellite to 360 deg¢s i1 with controlled orientation of the spin axis and to acquire the angular velocity and the attitude during the scientific experiment. ESTCube-1 is a one-unit CubeSat launched on 7 May 2013, 2:06 UTC on board the Vega VV02 rocket. Its primary mission is to measure the Coulomb drag force exerted by a natural plasma stream on a charged tether and, therefore, to perform the basic proof of concept measurement and technology demonstration of electric solar wind sail technology. The attitude determination system uses three-axis magnetometers, three-axis gyroscopic sensors, and two-axis Sun sensors, a Sun sensor on each side of the satellite. While commercial off-the-shelf components are used for magnetometers and gyroscopic sensors, Sun sensors are custom- built based on analogue one-dimensional position sensitive detectors. The attitude of the satellite is estimated on board using an Unscented Kalman Filter. An ARM 32-bit processor is used for ADCS calculations. Three electromagnetic coils are used for attitude control. The system is characterized through tests and simulations. Results include mass and power budgets, estimated uncertainties as well as attitude determination and control performance. The system fulfils all mission requirements.
Highlights
The CubeSat standard [1], originally developed for student access to aerospace development programmes, has found applications in scientific experimentation, technology demonstration, space exploration, Earth observation, atmospheric science, space weather research, propulsion experimentation, and, possibly, interplanetary research [2,3,4,5,6,7]
This paper presents the design, development, and pre-launch characterization of the ESTCube-1 Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS)
Its primary mission is to measure the Coulomb drag force exerted by a natural plasma stream on a charged tether and, to perform the basic proof of concept measurement and technology demonstration of electric solar wind sail technology
Summary
The CubeSat standard [1], originally developed for student access to aerospace development programmes, has found applications in scientific experimentation, technology demonstration, space exploration, Earth observation, atmospheric science, space weather research, propulsion experimentation, and, possibly, interplanetary research [2,3,4,5,6,7]. Aalto-1 plans to perform high spin rate control for tether deployment and a de-orbiting experiment [24]. ESTCube-1 is the first satellite aiming to perform high spin rate control using only electromagnetic coils as actuators. The ADCS of a one-unit CubeSat ESTCube-1 is designed to perform high rate spin control for centrifugal tether deployment as part of the electric solar wind sail (E-sail) [25,26,27] experiment. Precise angular velocity and attitude measurements are needed for a successful E-sail experiment. This is a pre-launch paper and does not include flight data. Attitude control performance is given as the number of orbits required to spin up the satellite
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