ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

Providing cost-effective space access further on with increased autonomy, robustness and fault tolerance within the AOCS will be a key for technical and economical break-through of small satellites. This paper presents design, implementation, and test results of the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) of the small satellite OOV TET (launch mass 120 kg). Particular attention is paid to the implementation of fault tolerant design and high accurate attitude control performance of the AOCS. The redundancy management concept and robust control core are presented. Furthermore the fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) mechanism, which are implemented in various functional levels, are shown. Finally the paper presents the test strategy and test results for verifying the hardware and proposed fault tolerant design. The FDIR mechanism and robust control algorithm was extensively tested and verified via a newly developed state-of-the-art air bearing test bed. Hardware in the loop test as well as a complete AOCS check on subsystem level was performed on the test bed.