Magnetorquer Based Vertical Damping Method for Microsatellite Attitude Control

Abstract

Aiming at a three-axis stabilized microsatellite, a novel attitude control method, called magnetorquer based vertical damping, is proposed to avoid the occurrence of the worst situation that the non-solar-battery-plane spins towards the sun. DSP based simulation results based on DSP show that the vertical damping method outperforms the simple damping method when no orbit information is available, simultaneously the whole attitude control scheme is simple and effective. The proposed solution guarantees a stable power supply from the electrical source even under the extreme situation, which improves the reliability of the whole microsatellite system.