Project of attitude control system based on reaction wheels

This project is included in the investigation group PLATHON, which has as the main objective the optical communication between satellites. In this investigation group there are included various parallel projects, which are necessary for the development and experimentation of this project. The objective of this project is the development on an attitude determination and control system (ADCS) of 1 Dof for a CubeSat, based on the usage of reaction wheels. The main interest of the project is to accomplish a physical system that is capable of rotating the system in a controlled way and controlling the orientation of the CubeSat with an acceptable precision. It is intended the system can b integrated in a 1U CubeSat. This work is intended to be tested in a space simulated situation, specifically an airbearing. In this project, the main focus of the work is the development of the software of the ADCS, which has to include mainly the integration of a control of the CubeSats positioning mode. This software must be Open Source, and the resources used must be economic. The software must be able to work in an integrated PCB with all the elements. As this work starts from zero, some designs of circuits, programs and experimentation has been done in order to reach the main point of the project. However, the work shown in this project is focused in the design and development of the software and hardware of the ADCS prototype created. Some tests have been performed on the system in order to determine the reliability and functionality of the design. The design of the software of positioning control has been done by manoeuvres of coarse pointing and fine pointing. Other additional testing modes are included in the code. The code has been designed to be further developed in the future, and even add some possible modes of operation from other projects developed on the fiel