Recently, a variety of small spacecraft have been launched and used for interplanetary missions. Conventionally, reaction wheels (RWs) and thrusters are used for these attitude control systems in almost all interplanetary spacecraft. While these actuators are promising for attitude control, the lifetime of the spacecraft mission is limited by the extra fuel needed for the thrusters. Moreover, it is difficult to install thrusters in all small spacecraft due to low reliability and strict limitations on mass and power consumption. To obtain both fuel-free and available attitude control for small spacecraft, this study proposes an interplanetary magnetic attitude control system including attitude stabilization and angular momentum unloading based on an interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) Kalman filter. In the proposed method, an electromagnetic coil interacting with the IMF is used for an attitude control system. To achieve the proposed method, the faint magnetic field must be detected. However, the IMF is too weak to sense using only on-board magnetic sensors. To deal with the technical issue, this study proposes a magnetic attitude control system with an unscented Kalman filter using gyro measurements and generated magnetic moment by the electromagnetic coil to estimate the weak magnetic field. With the estimated magnetic field vector, the spacecraft can achieve fuel-free attitude stabilization and RW unloading under the constraints. This proposed system does not require fuel for attitude control. Furthermore, the simple structure and electronic circuits of the electromagnetic coil allow the spacecraft to achieve a simple and reliable attitude control system. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed attitude stabilization and RW unloading methods.

中文翻译：

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基于IMF观测器的小型航天器行星际磁姿态控制

最近，各种小型航天器已经发射并用于行星际任务。传统上，几乎所有行星际飞船中的这些姿态控制系统都使用反作用轮 (RW) 和推进器。虽然这些执行器有望用于姿态控制，但航天器任务的寿命受到推进器所需的额外燃料的限制。而且，由于可靠性低，质量和功耗的严格限制，很难在所有小型航天器中安装推进器。为了获得小型航天器的无燃料和可用姿态控制，本研究提出了一种基于行星际磁场（IMF）卡尔曼滤波器的行星际磁姿态控制系统，包括姿态稳定和角动量卸载。在提出的方法中，与 IMF 相互作用的电磁线圈用于姿态控制系统。为了实现所提出的方法，必须检测微弱的磁场。然而，IMF 太弱，无法仅使用机载磁传感器进行感应。为了解决这个技术问题，本研究提出了一种带有无迹卡尔曼滤波器的磁性姿态控制系统，该系统使用陀螺仪测量和电磁线圈产生的磁矩来估计弱磁场。利用估计的磁场矢量，航天器可以在约束条件下实现无燃料姿态稳定和RW卸载。这个提议的系统不需要用于姿态控制的燃料。此外，电磁线圈的简单结构和电子电路使航天器能够实现简单可靠的姿态控制系统。