Mission management and control for cubesatellites

Abstract

Here in this thesis mission management and control for a CubeSat from attitude determination and control perspective is explained. First, the purpose of the thesis is presented, followed by a literature review of CubeSats and attitude determination methods. Secondly, a 3U+ CubeSat, SharjahSat-1, mission overview and the system block diagram which includes all the subsystems within the CubeSat are presented. Then, each subsystem within the CubeSat is explained briefly. This section includes main payload, secondary payload, structures and mechanisms, on-board command and data handling system, communication system, electrical power system (EPS), attitude determination and control system (ADCS) are presented. The orbital analyses including lifetime, power generation, star access, and camera access analyses, and the system budgets including, mass, power, data, and link budgets are presented in order to give a clear understanding for the subsystem requirements. Then general operation phases of the SharjahSat-1 are explained. These include Launch and Early Operation Phase (LEOP), normal operation phase, safe operation phase and mission specific operation phases. At the end of this section, the ground station (GS) interface prepared specifically for the SharjahSat-1 mission is presented. Thirdly, attitude determination algorithms and sensors used in this study are presented. Following that, attitude determination and control in SharjahSat-1 is explained in detail. Some of the sensor performances on different control modes are discussed. Also, the telecommands and telemetries related to ADCS operations in the GS is explained. At the end of this section, ADCS flowcharts that are implemented in SharjahSat-1 operations, are explained briefly. In the next section, current condition of the SharjahSat-1 in the orbit is explained. The mission current mission scenarios based on the data received from the SharjahSat-1 in orbit and the performance of the satellite is discussed. Then, the findings from the data collected in orbit and the results from the attitude determination algorithm used in the study is compared and discussed. Lastly, the conclusion of the thesis is presented.