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 stabilized spacecraft control algorithm but hardly for a spin-stabilized spacecraft. A modular testbed for testing a spinning spacecraft has been developed at Surrey Space Centre initially for the real-time verification of a prolate spinner slew control algorithm. This testbed is made from commercial off-the-shelf components with a modular system design approach through rapid control prototyping using Matlab xPC Target and is extendable to other rapid control prototyping techniques. It is equipped with a novel low-cost monocular vision system for attitude determination with accuracy of 0.06 deg and angular velocity accuracy of . For the current specification, a cold-gas propulsion system is fixed to the testbed with a two-degree-of-freedom thruster set that can deliver up to 0.25 N of thrust and an air bearing capability that gives three degrees of freedom with a maximum tilt angle of 30 deg. In this paper, the testbed implementation is described, and the test platform is verified.
Modular Testbed for Spinning Spacecraft
Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets ; 54 , 1 ; 90-100
2016-10-03
11 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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