In-flight inertia matrix estimation of a gyroless satellite

Knowledge of the inertia parameters is vital to guarantee a correct attitude control of a spacecraft. The relatively low accuracy of their estimate prior to launch, together with possible changes of these quantities, make the in-orbit inertia estimation a problem of great interest. In this work, the estimation of the inertia matrix for a gyroless satellite is considered. An iterative instrumental variable algorithm is proposed that relies on the star tracker measurements. A semi-adaptive filter is designed in order to achieve low variance estimates, by taking care of both sensor noise and torque disturbances. The performance of the proposed algorithm is then analyzed via Monte Carlo simulations, using data generated from a high-fidelity simulator.

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