Published: 30 September 2012

Novel attitude control devices for CubeSat satellites

Domantas Brucas1
Ramutis Bansevicius2
Aurelijus Domeika3
Vidmantas Tomkus4
Vytautas Bakanauskas5
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Abstract

In recent years a very modern trend of space exploration activities – constructing, launching and operating nano-satellites, became very popular. One of the main problems in implementation and control of nano-satellite is ensuring accurate yet simple and small-sized attitude control equipment. Most of the equipment implemented for that task in the past was large, bulky and could be hardly used on extremely small CubeSat standard nano-satellites. The equipment under development for attitude control of the satellites is described in this paper. The equipment relies on implementation of piezoelectric transducers for rotation of spherical body – reaction sphere, thus ensuring precise three-axis attitude control of the satellite by means of single device. Description of the device under development with some calculations and examples of implementation of such instrumentation is further described in the paper.

About this article

Received
15 May 2012
Accepted
04 September 2012
Published
30 September 2012
Keywords
nano-satellite
CubeSat
attitude control
reaction-wheel
momentum of inertia