Attitude determination and control: Detailed design, test, and implementation for CanX-2 and preliminary design for CanX-3 and CanX-4/5

The University of Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory develops nanosatellites through its Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) program to advance scientific understanding and engineering capabilities. Three missions are treated: CanX-2, a nanopropulsion demonstration mission that also observes greenhouse gas fluxes and upper-atmospheric water properties; CanX-3, an astronomy mission that performs differential photometry on the brightest stars in the sky; and CanX-4/5, a dual-satellite formation flight mission. The success of each mission depends, in part, on the satellites' ability to determine and control orientation, particularly in the context of payloads. This drives the need to develop a high-fidelity, robust attitude determination and control subsystem. This thesis covers the full attitude subsystem design, test, implementation, and anticipated performance of the CanX-2 mission; the preliminary attitude subsystem design for the CanX-3 and CanX-4/5 missions; and discussion of some of the infrastructure that has been developed to test the designs and support the CanX program.