Magnetometer-Only Kalman Filter Based Algorithms for High Accuracy Spacecraft Attitude Estimation (A Comparative Analysis)

Kalman Filter for Spinning Spacecraft Attitude Estimation

This paper presents a Kalman filter using a seven-component attitude state vector comprising the angular momentum components in a n inertial reference frame, the angular momentum components in the body frame, and a rotation angle. The relatively slow variation of these parameters makes this parameterization advantageous for spinning spacecraft attitude estimation. The filter accounts for the co...

Signal Conditioning for the Kalman Filter: Application to Satellite Attitude Estimation with Magnetometer and Sun Sensors

Most satellites use an on-board attitude estimation system, based on available sensors. In the case of low-cost satellites, which are of increasing interest, it is usual to use magnetometers and Sun sensors. A Kalman filter is commonly recommended for the estimation, to simultaneously exploit the information from sensors and from a mathematical model of the satellite motion. It would be also co...

Indirect Kalman Filter for 3D Attitude Estimation

A robust strong tracking cubature Kalman filter for spacecraft attitude estimation with quaternion constraint

This paper considers a robust strong tracking nonlinear filtering problem in the case there are model uncertainties including the model mismatch, unknown disturbance and status mutation in the spacecraft attitude estimation system with quaternion constraint. Two multiple fading factor matrices are employed to regulate the prediction error covariance matrix, which guarantees its symmetry. The sp...

Magnetometer-based Attitude and Rate Estimation for a Spacecraft with Wire Booms

A magnetometer-based filter and smoother are presented for estimating attitude, rate, and boom orientations for a spinning spacecraft that has wire booms. These estimates are needed to analyze science data from the subpayloads of a recent sounding rocket mission. The estimator is initialized with the measured angular rate of each subpayload at ejection and thereafter relies solely on three-axis...