Tabletop Testbed for Attitude Determination and Control of Nanosatellites

Abstract

To simulate the conditions of the space environment at ground, the Laboratory of Application and Innovation in Aerospace Science (LAICA) of the University of Brasília (UnB) is developing a dedicated testbed to reproducing nanosatellite attitude motion. The testbed is composed of an air-bearing table and a Helmholtz cage. The air-bearing table is a spacecraft simulator that can simulate frictionless conditions with three rotational degrees of freedom. Balancing the simulator is essential in order to make the gravitational torque negligible. The testbed is also equipped with a Helmholtz cage to recreate the Earth's magnetic field conditions that spacecrafts encounter in orbit. This paper presents the design and realization of this low-cost testbed. A simple and efficient automated balancing algorithm based on the least-squares method (LSM) is proposed and validated by experiments. The performance of the proposed simulator is evaluated and compared with previous works. © 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Citation

Silva, R. C. D., Guimarães, F. C., Loiola, J. V. L. D., Borges, R. A., Battistini, S., & Cappelletti, C. (2019). Tabletop Testbed for Attitude Determination and Control of Nanosatellites. Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 32(1), Article 04018122. https://doi.org/10.1061/%28asce%29as.1943-5525.0000952

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 18, 2018
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Deposit Date: Aug 3, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 4, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
• Print ISSN: 0893-1321
• Electronic ISSN: 1943-5525
• Publisher: American Society of Civil Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 04018122
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1061/%28asce%29as.1943-5525.0000952
• Keywords: Mechanical Engineering; General Materials Science; Civil and Structural Engineering; Aerospace Engineering
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1481334
• Publisher URL: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29AS.1943-5525.0000952
• Additional Information: This material may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This material may be found at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29AS.1943-5525.0000952