Development of a Novel Device for Attitude Control over Small Satellites

Abstract

Recent years have faced a very modern trend for space exploration activities – constructing, launching and operating nanosatellites have become very popular. One of the major problems of implementing and taking control over the nanosatellite is ensuring accurate but simple and small dimension equipment for attitude control. Most of the equipment implemented for the introduced task was large and bulky in the past and could be hardly used on extremely small satellites. The paper describes equipment under development for attitude control over satellites. Equipment relies on the implementation of piezoelectric transducers for the rotation of a spherical body, i.e. reaction sphere, thus ensuring precise three-axis attitude control over the satellite by means of a single device. Further, the article focuses on the device under development with some calculations and examples of implementing such instruments.