Attitude & orbital control system design for near-Earth asteroid exploration using autonomous miniature satellites

The thesis explores designing an attitude and orbital control system for an autonomous 6U CubeSat near-Earth asteroid fly-by mission, aiming to conceptualize an off-the-shelf solution. It addresses selecting propulsion systems for interplanetary travel, reaction wheel desaturation, and attitude control during the mission.<br/><br/>Through a fuel...

Attitude Control of Flapping-Wing Air Vehicles

Flapping-Wing Air Vehicles (FWAV) are autonomously flying vehicles that use their flapping wings to simultaneously stay aloft and enable controllable flight. FWAVs that are capable of controllable flight are reported in literature, though a theoretical background of the aerodynamic performance of different attitude control mechanisms is absent...

Fault Tolerant Control of Multirotor UAV for Piloted Outdoor Flight

The thesis aims to develop a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) architecture, for the case of a damaged actuator for a multirotor that can be applied across multirotor platforms based on their Attainable Virtual Control Set (AVCS). The research is aimed to study the AVCS and identify the parameters that limit the controllability of multirotor UAV post...

Design of the European Lunar Penetrator (ELUPE) Descent Module Controller

To obtain unambiguous ground truth of water-ice residing in permanently shaded regions of the Moon and to characterise the local regolith, ESA considers a mission involving an instrumented penetrator implanted there by high-speed impact. Released into lunar orbit, the European Lunar Penetrator (ELUPE) Descent Module will autonomously traverse a...

Optimal scheduling for agile Earth observation satellites

The past decade has seen a continuous increase of Earth observation missions, since they are regarded as an important tool to address global problems such as climate change or disaster mitigation. A commercial trend exists now towards higher resolution imagery, which drives the use of agile satellites. Nevertheless, a disadvantage of agile...

Precise control of LISA with Quantitative Feedback Theory

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a European mission for the detection of gravitational waves in space set to be launched in 2034. The mission will see the deployment of 3 spacecraft in heliocentric orbit keeping a triangular formation with side length of 2.5 million km. Laser beams are exchanged between the spacecraft by means of...

Attitude Control of Flexible Spacecraft: Design, implementation and evaluation of control strategies targeting flexible structures in the space domain, based in an analytical modeling of these structures

During the last decades, large deployable structures are starting to be seen as a plausible configuration to multiple space missions, such as solar sailing, LEO (Low Earth Orbit) deorbiting missions or solar power generation. Technological advances in key areas, such as thin film solar cells or new deployment methods, as well as the...

Development of a Robust and Combined Controller for On-Orbit Servicing Missions

Nowadays, a satellite is considered as out of range forever once it is launched. This may soon no longer hold thanks to on-orbit servicing. However, the complexity of that topic makes it highly challenging on many aspects. On-orbit servicing using a robotic arm is nonetheless the most investigated technology in order to achieve the berthing of...

Magnetorquer Design and Attitude Control for SHAPE

Designing and modelling a magnetorquer, and developing an attitude control loop, with magnetorquers as only actuators, for the Stable and Highly Accurate Pointing Earth-Imager (SHAPE), which has a huge momentum wheel for stabilization and flies in a very low Earth orbit.

GOCE Spacecraft Attitude Control: A magnetic attitude controller simulator

Given the difficulty that is normally associated with tuning highly nonlinear control systems, such as seen in LEO spacecraft, it is interesting to evaluate how new controller types perform. The measured data from the GOCE mission has led to the creation of high fidelity torque models describing the angular perturbations acting on a spacecraft....

SPS-2: Attitude Control System Design for the Science Mode

Spacecraft attitude refers to the orientation of the spacecraft body axes with respect to the inertial reference frame. Attitude determination and control is the estimation of the current orientation of a satellite and controlling or changing it on demand to reach a desired orientation. The SPS-2 Attitude Control System consists of four modes:...

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Flight Control: Stability and Robustness Analysis and Improvements

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) is a variation on Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) retaining the high-performance advantages of NDI, while increasing controller robustness to model uncertainties and decreasing the dependency on the vehicle model. After a successful flight test with a multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV), the...

The design of an Attitude Control System for the SPS-2 satellite: For the Rate Damping, Sun Acquisition and Sun Pointing Modes

This thesis covers the design of the Attitude Control System for the SPS-2 configuration, developed at Airbus Defense and Space the Netherlands. The start of the SPS-2 mission consists of three phases: rate damping, Sun Acquisition and Sun Pointing. The SPS-2 satellite has five available mounting places for different payloads. In the first part...

Steering Algorithm of Single Gimbal Control Moment Gyroscopes: A Practical Application for Agile Spacecraft

Future space platforms, such as next-generation Earth imaging and missile-tracking satellites, require rapid rotational maneuverability. Currently, most European satellites use reaction wheels as momentum exchange device for their Attitude Control System. However, reaction wheels do not produce enough torque to meet the high slew rate...

Evolving Systems Approach to the Attitude Control of a Large-Space-Debris Removal Spacecraft

Space debris has become a major issue for the space industry over the last couple of years. The increasing number of uncontrolled objects in space increases the chance of collision with a spacecraft. The unexpected loss of contact with ENVISAT, the European Space Agency’s largest environmental spacecraft, added one more piece of debris to the...

Design, Integration and Verification of the Delfi-n3Xt Reaction Wheel System

To improve the pointing capabilities of nanosatellites a fast response attitude control system is required. Reaction wheels are an effective solution and rely on the simple principle of conservation of angular momentum. Also they can be developed within the stringent budgets of nanosatellites with current technologies. The Delfi-n3Xt satellite...

Robust Nonlinear Spacecraft Attitude Control: An Incremental Backstepping Approach

In order to meet requirements in terms of robustness, stability, and performance for future generations of advanced attitude control systems, a sensor-based approach using Incremental Backstepping control is developed and proposed in this thesis. Assuming full state availability and fast control action, the resulting time-scale separation...

Robust and Adaptive Nonlinear Attitude Control of a Spacacraft: A Comparison of Backstepping-based Designs

In the context of the initiative Formation for Atmospheric Science and Technology demonstration (FAST), this dissertation describes the design and comparison of several nonlinear attitude controllers for TU Delft’s micro-satellite. The control requirements include robustness against model uncertainties and disturbances. To this end, Backstepping...