FLIGHT RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE ØRSTED ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM

Small satellites provide a growing possibility for carry-ing out space experiments within an affordable budget. Keeping cost down requires a design philosophy, which involves some degree of risk. Sharing the understanding and experience gained from flight operation is important for evaluating the design and provide valuable input to future projects of similar nature. The small satellite Ørsted was launched on 23 February 1999. Besides demonstrating new technical capabilities based on new hardware and inexpensive actuators, Ørsted provides flight experience with on-board autonomy. The attitude control and estimation algorithms are integrated with a supervisory control architecture that enables re-configuration in real time, based on mission phase and contingency requirements. This paper discusses and eval-uates the Ørsted attitude control system operations his-tory. 1