High resolution hybrid stepper motor with pole redundancy for space application

This paper describes the design and development of a 720 steps hybrid stepper motor with pole redundancy used as the drive motor for the solar cell array of the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite. The motor is of pancake design and the step angle is 0.5 degrees . The holding torque is 0.5 Nm. Apart from the step-by-step design procedure, relevant details regarding fabrication and testing are reported. The test results are quite satisfactory and conform the high performance of the developed motor.