CubeSat attitude control using micronewton electrospray thruster actuation

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.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Van de Loo, Mark David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sara Seager.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• 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.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90806

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/90806