Three-axis attitude stabilization with averaging magnetic controller

This paper mainly investigates a new active magnetic controller for small near-Earth-pointing satellites. In some real tests the three-axis magnetorquer only failed to keep the satellites in the pointing attitude, thus a biased momentum wheel is proposed to support the magnetorquer. Since the biased momentum wheel keeps a constant rate, the attitude controller is reduced to a simple active magnetic stabilization law during the normal stage. The control parameters designed by using a so-called orbit-averaged magnetic control have been tested on several typical orbits in the simulation part. The results show that the attitude control system performs considerably well in many cases, even though the pitch magnetorquer breaks down on a low inclination orbit, or the roll/yaw magnetorquer fails to work on a medial (or high) inclination orbit.