Boeing’s CubeSat TestBed 1 Attitude Determination Design and On-Orbit Experience

The CubeSat standard has provided space access to rapidly accelerate the maturity of hardware components and software algorithms for extremely small satellites. The Boeing CubeSat TestBed 1 (CSTB1) on‐orbit experiment, launched April 17, 2007, validated a highly integrated and multi‐functional approach for attitude determination. This paper covers the constraints and design concept of a CubeSat attitude determination system using multiple integrated sensors. The on‐orbit data collected from five two‐axis commercial‐off‐the‐shelf MEMS magnetometers, and four suites of sun sensors was processed and analyzed to determine the attitude of CSTB1. The attitude determination was verified via an image from a low power CMOS camera and solar cell measurements. Lastly, this paper addresses how our attitude determination solution was used to help refine vehicle operations