Miniaturized attitude control system for nanosatellites

A miniaturized attitude control system suitable for nanosatellites, developed using only commercial off-the-shelf components, is described in the paper. It is a complete and independent system to be used on board nanosatellites, allowing automated attitude control. To integrate this system into nanosatellites such as Cubesats its size has been reduced down to a cube of side about 5 cm. The result is a low cost attitude control system built with terrestrial components, integrating three micro magnetotorquers, three micro reaction wheels, three magnetometers and redundant control electronics, capable of performing automatics operations on request from the ground. The system can operate as a real time maneuvering system, executing commands sent from the ground or as a standalone attitude control system receiving the solar array status from a hosting satellite and the satellite ephemeris transmitted from the ground station. The main characteristics of the developed system and test results are depicted in this paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.