Aas 12-169 a New Method for Simulating the Attitude Dynamics of Passively Magnetically Stabilized Spacecraft

There is a desire to accurately simulate the transient behavior of such passively magnetically stabilized spacecraft both during the initial post separation phase and when subjected to disturbances during the mission. Initial post separation tumbling rates can be of the order of several degrees a second requiring integration time steps of less than a second to preserve numerical accuracy. As spacecraft are typically lightly damped, this post separation de-tumbling phase can take several days to complete. The combination of a multiple day time horizon and sub second time steps necessitates the evaluation of millions of time steps for accurate simulations, and existing methods can take several hours to complete. Any improvement in simulation speed will allow for more initial conditions, disturbances and design parameters to be studied. Simulation speed increases would be especially beneficial when performing parameter identification, an iterative process requiring large numbers of simulation runs.