Three-axis reaction wheel attitude control system for KITSAT-3 microsatellite

Abstract

A design study of the low cost attitude control system for the KITSAT-3 microsatellite has been made to achieve high precision control performance. A three-axis reaction wheel and a fiber optic rate gyro system with magnetorquers were proposed far the control hardware of the satellite. The system is specially designed for a low earth orbit budget mission. A star sensor and rate gyro combination will provide high accuracy attitude reference while the satellite is in the precision pointing mode. Modeling of the spacecraft dynamics and comparison between conventional quaternion feedback and a genetic algorithm are presented with simulation results.