The accuracy of attitude determination plays a key role in the improvement of surveying and mapping accuracy for high-resolution remote-sensing satellites, and it is a bottleneck in large-scale satellite topographical mapping. As the on-board energy is constrained and the performance of an attitude-measurement device is limited, the attitude acquired is discretely sampled with a settled time in...

The Chinese BeiDou system (BDS), having different types of satellites, is an important addition to the ever growing system of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). It consists of Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit (IGSO) satellites and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites. This paper investigates the receiver-dependent bias between these sat...

The goal of the present study is to develop a decentralized coordinated attitude control algorithm for satellite formation flying. To handle the nonlinearity of the dynamic system, the problems of absolute and relative attitude dynamics are formulated for the State-Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) technique. The SDRE technique is for the first time utilized as a nonlinear controller of the rel...

This article describes a simulator of small satellite attitude environment and dynamics, complete with a set of realistic sensors and the most commonly used actuator in this class of satellites. The simulator described is useful in attitude estimation and control algorithm development. Some results of the simulation of the PoSAT-1 satellite are presented.

Abstract – A study of a three-axis stabilized satellite attitude control in geostationary orbit is presented. The analysis is based on a neural predictive approach using Kalman filtering algorithms. Optimization of a quadratic performance functional is used to determine the discrete predictive control actions. The control determination on a typical iteration is viewed as a stochastic optimal li...

This report presents an account of the demand made by solar radiation pressure 6n the attitude-control system of an earth satellite whose external configuration is in the shape of a rectangular prism, the surfaces being assumed to be perfectly reflecting. Expressions determining the amount of angular impulse that must be supp~ed by an attitude-control system in the course of a year in order to ...

Small satellites have limited payload and their attitudes are sometimes difficult to determine from the limited onboard sensors alone. Wrong attitudes lead to inaccurate map projections and measurements that require post-processing correction. In this study, we propose an automated and robust scheme that derives the satellite attitude from its observation images and known satellite position by ...

In view of the issue of rapid attitude maneuver control of agile satellite, this paper presents an attitude-tracking control algorithm with path planning based on the improved genetic algorithm, adaptive backstepping control as well as sliding mode control. The satellite applies double gimbal control moment gyro as actuator and is subjected to the external disturbance and uncertain inertia prop...

Abstract: An optimal reconfiguration control for satellites formation flying with attitude constraints by the use of a small number of thrusters is addressed. These thrusters are fixed to the satellite body and generate unilateral forces. This study assumes that the satellite’s attitude angle during the reconfiguration maneuver is restricted within a certain bound from a specified direction in ...

A novel attitude measuring sensor is presented to be used on agile satellites without any angular field of view restrictions. The sensor is based on low-cost, medium resolution attitude vector measurements, obtained from geomagnetic detectors (magnetometers) and coarse sun sensors (solar cells). The vector measurements chosen, have an unrestricted field of view and a reasonably high response ba...