Micronewton electrospray thrusters are a promising new actuator for CubeSat attitude control. Electrospray thrusters have advantages over current state of the art CubeSat attitude actuators in mass, volume, and their ability to produce translational acceleration in addition to control moments. An attitude determination and control system was designed for a 1U CubeSat assuming commercial-off-the-shelf attitude determination hardware components and six electrospray thrusters developed by the MIT Space Propulsion Laboratory. A high fidelity spacecraft dynamics simulation was constructed for analysis of the performance of the ADCS system. Attitude determination was tested with an engineering model of a 1U CubeSat, and the entire ADCS system was tested in simulation. Results of these preliminary tests show the use of electrospray thrusters as attitude actuators to be feasible, although significant work remains to complete a flight-ready ADCS system.
CubeSat attitude control using micronewton electrospray thruster actuation
2014
217 pages
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-217).
Hochschulschrift
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
ELECTROSPRAY THRUSTER FOR CUBESAT
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