TARGET TRACKING ATTITUDE MANEUVER OF A BIAS MOMENTUM MICRO SATELLITE USING TWO WHEELS

A 70 kg micro-piggyback satellite, "//-Lab Sat", is currently under development and will be launched in the near future by a Japanese H-IIA launcher. One of its missions will be to release two truncated cone-shaped targets with representative dimensions of about 10cm and obtain CMOS camera images of them. The targets will be released using springs with a velocity of about 1 cm/s. Since there are uncertainties regarding the release direction of the targets, it would be advantageous if the satellite could alter its attitude to track them. /x-Lab Sat is a bias momentum micro-satellite with two wheels, and three-axis attitude maneuvers are not easy for this hardware configuration. Two algorithms have been developed for 3-axis attitude maneuvering control of this configuration; one method utilizes the dynamic characteristics of spinning bodies, and the other applies sliding motion control. This paper describes these algorithms and presents the results of numerical simulations.