Design and Evaluation of the Attitude Determination and Control System for PW-Sat2 CubeSat

PW-Sat2 satellite is a 2kg CubeSat that is being developed by the students from Warsaw University of Technology. The project is a part of activity of the Students’ Space Association from Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering. The satellite will be launched in 2016 in Low Earth Orbit to test the deorbitation method using deployed sail in the end of the mission. The CubeSat will have deployable solar panels, therefore the Sun pointing is required to obtain most of the solar energy. In this paper, the design of the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) is presented. The attitude control approach utilizing spin stabilization with magnetic actuation is investigated. The attitude determination and estimation is realized with TRIAD algorithm and Multiplicative Extended Kalman Filter (MEKF). Proposed methods are verified in developed simulation software accounting for disturbance torques and environmental models. The simulations results prove the feasibility and robustness of proposed design approach.