FACILITY FOR ATTITUDE AND CONTROL SIMULATION OF CUBESAT CLASS SATELLITES

CubeSats are gaining ground beyond the education domain. Because of their low cost and rapid schedule, ensuring that their quality matches the space technology standard is mandatory, hence their testing on Earth reproducing space environment becomes fundamental. At the Guidance and Navigation Laboratory of the School of Aerospace Engineering of Rome, we designed and realized an air-bearing platform which allows to perform attitude control and navigation experiments for CubeSat satellites up to 6U in a microgravity environment. The different phases of the design and development of the facility are presented aiming to(at) provide reasonable guidelines allowing replicability in other laboratories.