CubeSat attitude control using micronewton electrospray thruster actuation
Name
891646393-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
30.82 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
711d85162c3bf5309cc918a3bb276f67
Author(s)
Van de Loo, Mark David
Advisor(s)
Sara Seager.
Date Issued
2014
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Micronewton electrospray thrusters are a promising new actuator for CubeSat attitude control. Electrospray thrusters have advantages over current state of the art CubeSat attitude actuators in mass, volume, and their ability to produce translational acceleration in addition to control moments. An attitude determination and control system was designed for a 1U CubeSat assuming commercial-off-the-shelf attitude determination hardware components and six electrospray thrusters developed by the MIT Space Propulsion Laboratory. A high fidelity spacecraft dynamics simulation was constructed for analysis of the performance of the ADCS system. Attitude determination was tested with an engineering model of a 1U CubeSat, and the entire ADCS system was tested in simulation. Results of these preliminary tests show the use of electrospray thrusters as attitude actuators to be feasible, although significant work remains to complete a flight-ready ADCS system.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-217).
Subjects
Aeronautics and Astronautics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
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