| Attitude determination schemes for small spacecraft have historically been unambitious owing to cost, mass, and power constraints. Most small spacecraft employ some type of passive stabilization, which relieves the complexity and computational burden of full 3-axis stabilization, but limits the utility of the spacecraft. In this thesis a moderately accurate (∼1 degree) attitude determination strategy based solely on magnetometer measurements is developed and applied to the three spacecraft comprising the Ionospheric Observation Nanosatellite Formation (ION-F). The complete magnetometer-based attitude determination backbone for ION-F includes Kalman filters for 3-axis attitude estimation and in-orbit magnetometer calibration. A supervisory module making the ION-F attitude determination and control subsystem fully autonomous is presented, along with the ION-F simulator, used to test the estimation and filtering algorithms under realistic conditions. The focus of this thesis is to provide the knowledge and tools necessary for facile implementation of 3-axis attitude estimation aboard small spacecraft.*; *This dissertation is multimedia (contains text and other applications not available in printed format). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat. |
