| In a spacecraft development cycle, components must undergo a rigorous regime of testing, known as acceptance testing, to ensure that they can operate in the required environment and at the required level before being accepted for spaceflight. This thesis discusses the acceptance testing of attitude determination and control hardware using these procedures for four satellite missions currently under development at the time of writing in the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. Focus is placed on improvements made to the acceptance testing procedures and analysis methods for the hardware. The key contributions of the thesis are improvements to the magnetometer functional test and calibration, rate sensor calibration, sun sensor calibration, and reaction wheel long-form functional test. This work demonstrates that the hardware integrated into the satellites is reliable, improving confidence in mission success, and in some cases could improve the performance of missions on-orbit. |
