Innovative power management, attitude determination and control tile for CubeSat standard NanoSatellites

Abstract

Electric power supply (EPS) and attitude determination and control subsystem (ADCS) are the most essential elements of any aerospace mission. Efficient EPS and precise ADCS are the core of any spacecraft mission. So keeping in mind their importance, they have been integrated and developed on a single tile called CubePMT module. Modular power management tiles (PMTs) are already available in the market but they are less efficient, heavier in weight, consume more power and contain less number of subsystems. Commercial of the shelf (COTS) components have been used for CubePMT implementation which are low cost and easily available from the market. CubePMT is developed on the design approach of AraMiS architecture: a project developed at Politecnico di Torino that provides low cost and higher performance space missions with dimensions larger than CubeSats. The feature of AraMiS design approach is its modularity. These modules can be reused for multiple missions which helps in significant reduction of the overall budget, development and testing time. One has just to reassemble the required subsystems to achieve the targeted specific mission. • The designed electric power supply generates, distributes and converts power to different voltage levels. • CubePMT has three types of attitude sensors which are a sun directional sensor, a two-axis magnetometer and a gyroscope. • Reconfigurable magnetorquer system has been designed for attitude control. • Commercial ultra-low power MSP430F5438A has been used as an on-board processor. • For housekeeping and monitoring purposes different sensors e.g. voltage, current and temperature have been used.