Determination and compensation of magnetic dipole moment inapplication for a scientific nanosatellite mission

Sammanfattning: SEAM (Small Explorer for Advanced Missions) is a 3U CubeSat developedat KTH Royal Institute of Technology which will provide highqualityDC and AC magnetic field measurements of Earth’s magneticfield. The measurement system requires extended periods of timeup to 1000 seconds without active attitude control. The satellite willuse passive gravity gradient stabilization and dipole cancellation via aseparate set of magnetorquers to satisfy LVLH pointing requirementsduring the coasting phases. In this thesis a detailed model of satellitemagnetic moment is presented which includes dipole moment sourcesfrom on-board current loops. The attitude dynamics of the satelliteis characterized with simulations and a strategy is proposed to estimateand compensate the time-dependent magnetic dipole momentusing the dipole compensation magnetorquers and an offline estimationalgorithm. The algorithm is tested with simulated error sourcesand noise and was found to be able to robustly identify and cancel outthe satellite dipole to satisfy mission requirements.