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Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Engineering

CubeSat

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

An Analysis Of Stabilizing 3u Cubesats Using Gravity Gradient Techniques And A Low Power Reaction Wheel, Erich Bender Jun 2011

An Analysis Of Stabilizing 3u Cubesats Using Gravity Gradient Techniques And A Low Power Reaction Wheel, Erich Bender

Aerospace Engineering

The purpose of this paper is to determine the feasibility of gravity gradient stabilizing a 3U CubeSat and then using a miniature reaction wheel to further increase stability characteristics. This paper also serves as a guide to understanding and utilizing quaternions in attitude control analysis. The analytical results show that using 33 centimeter booms and 400 gram tip masses, a 3U CubeSat will experience a maximum of 6 degrees of angular displacement in yaw and pitch, and less than .5 degrees of angular displacement in the nadir axis. A .120 kilogram miniature reaction wheel developed by Sinclair Interplanetary was introduced …


Non-Explosive Actuator Simulator, Bryan Costanza Jun 2010

Non-Explosive Actuator Simulator, Bryan Costanza

Aerospace Engineering

The CubeSat group at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo discovered the need for a new piece of ground test equipment. Previous testing of the non-explosive actuator has been very expensive and is not repeatable; two undesirable traits. The analysis of the fuse as well as the design and test of the simulator concept and final article is discussed. The simulator has already seen real use and its entire build and operation cost is much less than the cost of one test of the actual hardware. Performance of the simulator based on burn time and reset time is acceptable …