Session
Technical Session VIII: Frank J. Redd Student Competition
Abstract
The proliferation of CubeSats has brought satellite engineering and mission design into the hands of students and engineering teams across the country and the world. The low mass and low altitude of CubeSats in LEO means that aerodynamic forces will cause orbital decay and deorbit, while aerodynamic torques can cause reaction wheels to saturate, necessitating magnetorque to decouple angular momentum. Conversely, aerotorque can be leveraged for passive aerodynamic stabilization. In either case, understanding and predicting aerodynamic effects is critical to mission design. However, these effects are coupled to the instantaneous position, attitude, and velocity of satellites, making them difficult to model accurately. Furthermore, extant software typically focuses only on orbits, or only on generalized dynamics, not coupled orbit and attitude. The author thus presents a flexible, free and open source software infrastructure for simultaneous orbital and attitude propagation, catering to the unique requirements of CubeSats. Extreme performance allows simulation of an entire mission, from deploy to deorbit, in less than three minutes. Live 3-D visualizations provide instant feedback, encouraging experimentation with and learning about satellite design and orbital/attitude dynamics. Comprehensive documentation serves as a reference for those interested in the rich field of aerospace simulation.
Simultaneous Orbital and Attitude Propagation of CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit
The proliferation of CubeSats has brought satellite engineering and mission design into the hands of students and engineering teams across the country and the world. The low mass and low altitude of CubeSats in LEO means that aerodynamic forces will cause orbital decay and deorbit, while aerodynamic torques can cause reaction wheels to saturate, necessitating magnetorque to decouple angular momentum. Conversely, aerotorque can be leveraged for passive aerodynamic stabilization. In either case, understanding and predicting aerodynamic effects is critical to mission design. However, these effects are coupled to the instantaneous position, attitude, and velocity of satellites, making them difficult to model accurately. Furthermore, extant software typically focuses only on orbits, or only on generalized dynamics, not coupled orbit and attitude. The author thus presents a flexible, free and open source software infrastructure for simultaneous orbital and attitude propagation, catering to the unique requirements of CubeSats. Extreme performance allows simulation of an entire mission, from deploy to deorbit, in less than three minutes. Live 3-D visualizations provide instant feedback, encouraging experimentation with and learning about satellite design and orbital/attitude dynamics. Comprehensive documentation serves as a reference for those interested in the rich field of aerospace simulation.
