The availability of new high density FPGA technologies enables innovative approaches to the architecture of onboard computer systems (OBCS) for demanding small satellite applications. In the paper, we present the architecture of a highly integrated satellite computer exploiting the powerful features of Xilinx’s Virtex-II Pro FPGA technology. The computing resources of the “Flying Laptop” satell...

In this study Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) in the attitude determination and control system of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite is investigated. Attitude determination system uses algebraic method. This method is based on computing any two analytical vectors in the reference frame and measuring these vectors in the body coordinate system (Barishev & Krilov, 1968; Wertz, 1988). As measurin...

A 50kg-class micro satellite RISESAT has various missions for space research: a laser communication terminal called VSOTA, a 5m GSD multi-spectral high-resolution telescope called HPT, a corner cube retro reflector, and so on. In this paper, collaborate experiment plan of VSOTA, HPT, CCR and ground SLR stations for satellite attitude determination is introduced. Introduction Small satellites ar...

In this paper, a star tracker attitude estimation procedure with increased robustness and efficiency, using the AIM (Attitude Estimation using optimal Image Matching) algorithm, is presented and validated. The unique approach of the AIM algorithm allows us to introduce a reliable quality check which can be efficiently calculated. Unlike existing validation methods, this quality check not only d...

The Unaided Single Frequency/Single Epoch Global Navigation Satellite System (SF/SE GNSS) model is the most challenging scenario for ambiguity resolution in the GNSS attitude determination application. To improve the performance of SF/SE-GNSS ambiguity resolution without excessive cost, the Micro-Electro-Mechanical System Inertial Measurement Unit (MEMS-IMU) is a proper choice for the auxiliary...

Abstract—This paper presents the effect of the orbit inclination on the pointing error of the satellite antenna and consequently on its footprint on earth for a typical Kuband payload system. The performance assessment is examined using both analytical simulations and practical measurements, taking into account all the additional sources of the pointing errors, such as East-West station keeping...

Abstract— In general, most of communication satellites were designed to be operated in geostationary orbit. And many of them were designed in prolate dual-spin configuration. As a prolate dual-spin vehicle, they have to be stabilized against their internal energy dissipation effect. Several countries that located in southern hemisphere, has shown interest to use communication satellite. Because...

Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite I (STARS-I) project has carried since January 2005 under the leadership of Kagawa University. The main objective of STARS-I project is technical verification for Tethered Space Robot (TSR). TSR is a new type of space robot system proposed in the previous work. STARS-I consists of two small cubic satellites, one satellite has a function of tether deplo...

In this report, we propose a periodic state feedback control law for a class of continuous-time linear periodic systems. The proposed control law generates a sufficiently high frequency sinusoidal in the coefficient of a closed loop system, then the closed loop system is shown to be exponentially stable based on the averaging method. It is also shown that a closed loop solution is approximated ...