Autonomous spacecraft safing with reaction wheels

Details Autonomous spacecraft safing with reaction wheels Autonomous spacecraft safing with reaction wheels

1998-03-02

2000-07-18

Poon, Peter M.

Aeronautics and astronautics

Spacecraft

Attitude control

244164, B64G 128

Patent

active

06089508&

ABSTRACT:
A spacecraft with a reaction wheel system can be autonomously safed by setting the solar wings to continuous tracking, determining a slew rate vector based on the total angular momentum, and slewing the spacecraft using the slew rate vector until commanded to stop autonomous safing. In a typical application, the spacecraft has a reaction wheel assembly with four wheels arranged to form a right regular pyramid. Two reaction wheels on opposite edges of the pyramid form a first pair and the two remaining reaction wheels forming a second pair. The slew axis of rotation is found by determining as a selected pair the first pair if either reaction wheel in the second pair is inoperative, otherwise determining as the selected pair the second pair and determining as the slew axis of rotation the normalized projection of the axes of rotation of the selected pair onto the base. The slew direction is determined by the sign of the total angular momentum component along the slew axis of rotation.

REFERENCES:
patent: 4010921 (1975-08-01), Pistiner et al.
patent: 4188666 (1980-02-01), Legrand et al.
patent: 5035381 (1991-07-01), Matthews
patent: 5257759 (1993-11-01), Bender
patent: 5279483 (1991-12-01), Blancke et al.
patent: 5433402 (1995-07-01), Surauer et al.
patent: 5692707 (1995-05-01), Smay
patent: 5931421 (1996-08-01), Surauer et al.

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