Development of a nano-satellite attitude control system

• Main Author: Tan, Zhenyang
• Other Authors: Low Kay Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60984
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Satellite industry is rapidly making big steps in Singapore in the last decade especially with the launch of X-Sat, Singapore’s first ever locally designed satellite and VELOX-PII, wholly designed and built by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students. As detailed information such as specifications of designs on satellites from the external international sources are strictly confidential and limited, Singapore has to do the research and testing on her own while seeking additional advice from overseas research partners. This project focuses on the development of reaction wheel attitude control system of a satellite. Two different configurations of housing for the reaction wheels were designed and manufactured. They were then assembled and mounted to a test platform and placed on an air bearing table to achieve the microgravity environment. A previously established Model-Based Predictive Control (MPC) was used in the experimental setup to test run the attitude control experiment for the different configurations. Mathematical tools such as Single Value Decomposition and Lagrange Multiplier have also been employed in the pseudo-inverse reaction wheel matrix calculations and the accuracy of the calculations was compared to determine the better tool for pseudo-inverse calculations. Parameters for the VELOX-II were also considered and the required angular momentum to achieve the targeted slew rate for each axis was calculated which could be taken into consideration during the final selection of reaction wheels.