Rapid Initial Detumbling Strategy for Micro/Nanosatellite with Pitch Bias Momentum System

When a satellite separates from the launch vehicle, an initial high angular rate or a tip-off rate is generated. B-dot logic is generally used for controlling the initial tip-off rate. However, it has the disadvantage of taking a relatively long time to control the initial tip-off rate. To solve this problem, this paper suggests a new detumbling control method to be able to adapt to micro/nanosatellite with the pitch bias momentum system. Proposed detumbling method was able to control the angular rate within 20 minutes which is significantly reduced compared to conventional methods. Since the previous wheel start-up method cannot be used if the detumbling controller proposed by this paper is used, a method is also proposed for bringing up the momentum wheel speed to nominal rpm while maintaining stability in this paper. The performance of the method is compared and verified through simulation. The overall result shows much faster control time compared to the conventional methods, and achievement of the nominal wheel speed and 3-axes stabilization while maintaining stability.