Investigation of the conduction effect on temperature-based attitude estimation

Abstract

Temperature sensors have recently been proposed for attitude estimation (AE) of Low-Earth satellites. However, since half of the satellite surfaces do not receive any heat flux from the Sun, conduction occurs among the satellite surfaces. In this regard, the present study has focused on the effect of surfaces’ conduction as well as inner radiation on AE using temperature sensors. The nonlinear filter of Unsceted Kalman filter is adopted for AE, and the developed model to describe temperature rates is verified using Thermal Desktop and SINDA software. Monte Carlo simulations prove positive effect of the conduction on AE performance against negative role of the inner radiation.

Keywords

• attitude estimation
• temperature sensor
• heat flux
• radiation
• conduction