When the satellite takes orbital maneuver, the control force may stimulate the vibration of the flexible appendages and, therefore, affects the attitude of the satellite.The dynamic model of the satellite with a large solar panel is established via Lagrange equations.The coupling relations between the motion of the satellite orbit, the attitude and the flexible vibration are analyzed.The attitude control law is designed for the orbital maneuver with considering the output character of the attitude control thrusters.Numerical simulation is conducted to verify the effects of the orbital control force on the flexible panel and the satellite attitude.The efficiency of the attitude control law is also verified.

The digital infrared earth sensor (IRES) is an important component of the geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellite control system.IRES is used to measure the satellite attitude.Its outputs are used to compute the control torques for satellites.The IRES have four bolometer detectors.The attitude of any Chinese GEO satellite in orbit is determined using the information of three bolometer detectors at least.This paper develops an attitude determination method using two bolometer detectors only and gives an application strategy based on the real situation.With this method, the IRES application range is expanded, the redundancy is enhanced, and the lifetime is increased.

In view of the characteristics of maneuverable platform, the research on the maneuverable platform refueling on-orbit, which fits to bipropellant systems, is carried out.In the scheme, the surface tension tanks are used as supported and received tanks.The advantages of the scheme are as follows.Firstly, the scheme is matched with the propulsion system of spacecraft in China Secondly, no moving assemblies are used in the scheme, so the reliability of the system can be improved.Thirdly, the surface tension tank is the most appropriate tank for refueling spacecraft on-orbit.In the paper, the refueling system of the maneuverable platform is designed in detail.

The control moment gyros (CMG) are high-output-torque inertial actuators with torque amplifying capability and are usually used in the attitude control systems of large spacecrafts.In recent years, with the progress of some related techniques, the demands for CMG-based middle and small satellite platforms with high maneuver capability are rapidly increasing, and the CMGs are expected to output torques with not only high magnitude but also high accuracy.In consideration of the engineering practice, this paper proposes a method for measuring the accuracy of CMG gimbal angular rate.Also, a rotor magnetic flux oriented vector control method incorporating a friction torque observer and the corresponding compensation algorithm is proposed to control a sinusoidal permanent magnetic synchronous motor (PMSM) for driving the CMG gimbal.In the control loop, the stability and the dynamic performance of the CMG gimbal drive system can be improved effectively by compensating for the friction torque.

Reaction wheels are widely used in the modern spacecraft attitude control systems.But when the speed ofreaction wheel is crossing zero, the friction moment produced by reaction wheel may seriously affect the accuracy of satellite attitude control.This paper presents a golden-section adaptive control method which is based on the characteristic modeling, and builds the characteristic model of satellite systems including reaction wheels, then designs the control laws.The simulation results indicate that the approach can reduce the friction moment influence on attitude control accuracy and stability and, therefore, improve the accuracy of the attitude control.

The liquefied gas propulsion system is a good selection for the micro satellite orbit and attitude control.In the past 30 years, several kinds of liquefied gases were used as the propellant in micro satellites, including nitrous oxide, butane, propane and ammonia.In this paper, a general development of liquefied gas propellants is introduced, especially nitrous oxide is recommended as a propellant of liquefied gas propulsion systems for micro satellites.