L₁ adaptive attitude control for a picoscale satellite test bed

Abstract

Smaller and more agile space assets, such as picoscale satellites, have become one of the promising focuses for space missions because of the benefits in cost reduction, enhanced flexibility, survivability, and reliability. A simple magnetic torque coil-based attitude control system is proposed here for a one unit picoscale satellite test bed using an L 1 adaptive controller. A pointing accuracy of 2 deg is achieved in both a one-axis ground test bed and three-axis control simulation.

Attitude Regulation With Bounded Control in the Presence of Large Disturbances With Bounded Moving Average

“…A class of satellites, which is becoming very popular because of the modest construction and deployment costs, is that of the so-called CubeSats [13]- [18]. Unfortunately, CubeSats have a limited power budget and, because of their small dimension, are very sensitive to environmental disturbances, such as the Earth gravity gradient, aerodynamic drag, solar radiation pressure [19], [20], and to disturbances resulting from the coupling of the on-board electronics with the Earth magnetic field (often known as the residual dipole torque) [21]. In addition, the size and weight limitations impose strict constraints on the attitude control torque, which is often smaller, in magnitude, than the combined torque generated by the disturbances [22].…”