Test Bench For Nanosatellite Attitude Determination And Control System Ground Tests

Irina Gavrilovich (1) , Sébastien Krut (1) , Marc Gouttefarde (1) , François Pierrot (1) , Laurent Dusseau (2, 3, 4)

1 DEXTER - Robotique médicale et mécanismes parallèles
2 CSU - Centre Spatial Universitaire de Montpellier-Nîmes
3 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
4 RADIAC - Radiations et composants

This paper presents recent progress in designing a three degree-of-freedom (3DoF) test bench for CubeSats. Such test benches offer many prospects for ground testing of CubeSats and their subsystems, and first of all Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS). The difficulty of ground satellite tests is to create conditions simulating space environment with given accuracy while limiting the effects occurred on ground facilities. For nanosatellites, the accuracy of ground tests has to be very high due to reduced capability of actuators and high sensitivity to external forces. The main challenge of this research is to find a design solution allowing a nanosatellite to rotate freely around three axes with minimum disturbances from gravity and friction forces. We propose two ways to deal with these difficulties and avoid any limit in rotational motion. The first one is the active compensation of parasitic moments acting on CubeSat during the tests. The second one consists of an air bearing sphere structure providing a contactless suspension for all possible angular position of the CubeSat. In prospect, both approaches can be used together in one test bench to improve its efficiency. General aspects of the design and initial confirmation of system efficiency are presented.

Mots clés: CubeSat; testbed; satellite

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Irina Gavrilovich, Sébastien Krut, Marc Gouttefarde, François Pierrot, Laurent Dusseau. Test Bench For Nanosatellite Attitude Determination And Control System Ground Tests. 4S: Small Satellites Systems and Services Symposium, May 2014, Porto Petro, Spain. ⟨lirmm-01310802⟩