Attitude Control System Design & Verification for CNUSAIL-1 with Solar/Drag Sail

CNUSAIL-1, to be launched into low-earth orbit, is a cubesat-class satellite equipped with a 2 m × 2 m solar sail. One of CNUSAIL’s missions is to deploy its solar sail system, thereby deorbiting the satellite, at the end of the satellite’s life. This paper presents the design results of the attitude control system for CNUSAIL-1, which maintains the normal vector of the sail by a 3-axis active attitude stabilization approach. The normal vector can be aligned in two orientations: i) along the anti-nadir direction, which minimizes the aerodynamic drag during the nadir-pointing mode, or ii) along the satellite velocity vector, which maximizes the drag during the deorbiting mode. The attitude control system also includes a B-dot controller for detumbling and an eigen-axis maneuver algorithm. The actuators for the attitude control are magnetic torquers and reaction wheels. The feasibility and performance of the design are verified in high-fidelity nonlinear simulations.