Modular Testbed for Spinning Spacecraft

Abstract

Abstract-The ground verification of a spacecraft control algorithm is commonly done via air bearing facility. Air bearing testbeds are frequently developed for testing a three-axis stabilised spacecraft control algorithm but hardly for a spin stabilised spacecraft. A modular testbed for testing a spinning spacecraft has been developed in the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) initially for the real-time verification of a prolate spinner slew control algorithms. This testbed is made from commercially-offthe-shelf (COTS) components with a modular system design approach through rapid control prototyping (RCP) using Matlab xPC Target and extendable to other RCP technique. It is equipped with a novel low cost monocular vision system for attitude determination with the accuracy of 0.06 deg and angular velocity accuracy of 0.15 deg/s. For the current specification, a cold gas propulsion system is fixed to the testbed with a 2-DOF thruster set that can deliver up to 0.25N of thrust and an air bearing capability that gives 3-DOF with a maximum tilt angle of 30 deg. In this paper, the testbed implementation is described and the test platform is verified.

Cost Analysis for Mass Customized Production of Satellites Based on Modularity

“…A modular satellite platform design is defined which is composed of standardized, reconfigurable components, and should not be confused with common platform designs (identical, non-reconfigurable components) or heritage designs (a new design based on a previous old design). A theoretical model has been developed to gauge the benefits of adopting such designs [18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”