Attitude Determination and Control System for the PROCYON Micro-Spacecraft

Abstract

This paper describes development strategies and on-orbit results of the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) for the world’s first interplanetary micro-spacecraft, PROCYON, whose advanced mission objectives are optical navigation or an asteroid close flyby. Although earth-orbiting micro-satellites already have ADCSs for practical missions, these ADCSs cannot be used for interplanetary micro-spacecraft due to differences in the space environments of their orbits. To develop a new practical ADCS, four issues for practical interplanetary micro-spacecraft are discussed: initial Sun acquisition without magnetic components, angular momentum management using a new propulsion system, the robustness realized using a fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) system, and precise attitude control. These issues have not been demonstrated on orbit by interplanetary micro-spacecraft. In order to overcome these issues, the authors developed a reliable and precise ADCS, a FDIR system without magnetic components, and ground-based evaluation systems. The four issues were evaluated before launch using the developed ground-based evaluation systems. Furthermore, they were successfully demonstrated on orbit. The architectures and simulation and on-orbit results for the developed attitude control system are proposed in this paper.