Cubesat attitude control based on hard disk drive components - Theory and practice

Liran Sahar, Eviatar Edlerman, Hovhannes Agalarian, Vladimir Balabanov, Pini Gurfil

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

To control the rotational state of nanosatellites, miniaturized reaction wheels have been widely used. Miniaturized reaction wheels are manufactured by several companies, and can be found in multiple CubeSat missions. These reaction wheels have space heritage and good performance, but they are extremely costly. A typical price of a reaction wheel ranges from 12,000 to 20,000 USD. This poses a major problem to most CubeSat developers. We developed a costeffective alternative to existing reaction wheels, which reduces the cost of a unit to about 300 USD. The idea is to use hard disk drive (HDD) components as reaction wheels for CubeSats. HDD-based reaction wheels are much more affordable and provide similar performance to commercial systems. Analysis and experiments have been performed in order to validate the compatibility of the HDD-based wheel to the space environment.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDynamics and Control of Space Systems, DyCoSS 2017
EditorsYury N. Razoumny, Jean-Michel Contant, Anna D. Guerman, Filippo Graziani
Pages87-106
Number of pages20
StatePublished - 2017
Event3rd International Academy of Astronautics Conference on Dynamics and Control of Space Systems, DyCoSS 2017 - Moscow, Russian Federation
Duration: 30 May 20171 Jun 2017

Publication series

NameAdvances in the Astronautical Sciences
Volume161

Conference

Conference3rd International Academy of Astronautics Conference on Dynamics and Control of Space Systems, DyCoSS 2017
Country/TerritoryRussian Federation
CityMoscow
Period30/05/171/06/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Space and Planetary Science

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