A Contribution to a CubeSat ADCS TestBed for Educational Purposes
H.M. Powis (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
E. Mooij – Mentor (TU Delft - Astrodynamics & Space Missions)
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Abstract
Attitude-determination-and-control faults are one of the major causes of CubeSat failure in education-based missions. One reason is that flight-representative test facilities are rarely affordable. This thesis is a contribution to a low-cost, real-time ADCS test bench that uses educational-licence software and off-the-shelf hardware. A 3U reference CubeSat is modelled in MATLAB/Simulink with pre-existing space-system libraries; the model is auto-coded to C and deployed to Raspberry Pi 5 and Orange Pi 5 Plus single-board computers. EuroSim, installed on each board, schedules and executes the code in hard real time. Software-in-the-loop runs at 100 Hz to validate magnetic-rate detumbling, proportional–derivative Sun-pointing, and an Extended Kalman Filter that fuses magnetometer and Sun-sensor data. Stimulus-file injections confirm the architecture is ready for hardware-in-the-loop expansion. The study details the minimum components, accuracy margins, and build scripts needed to replicate the bench, providing an inexpensive, reproducible path towards flight-representative ADCS testing in educational CubeSat missions.