Research on Attitude Control of Micro Satellite Based on IGRF International Geomagnetic Field

Magnetic torque converter is a commonly used satellite attitude actuator. Its actual work depends on the earth's magnetic field vector provided by the magnetometer. To solve the problem that the satellite attitude control is affected by the complete failure of the in-orbit satellite magnetometer, this paper proposes a control method for microsatellites based on the IGRF international geomagnetic field model. According to the satellite orbit information of the current frame, the earth's magnetic field vector of the system is calculated with the IGRF international geomagnetic field model, and a hierarchical saturation controller is designed. The offset momentum wheel and magnetic torque converter are used as the joint actuator to control the satellite attitude. In addition, to save the computing resources of the airborne computer, the first-order approximate model of the international geomagnetic field is used to calculate the magnetic field vector. Finally, the mathematical model is established in the Simulink environment for simulation. The results show that the method designed in this paper can complete the satellite attitude control task, and the actuator will not be saturated in the control process. It can not only save computer computing resources but also ensure the high-precision control of the satellite. It can be used as the attitude control scheme after the complete failure of the on-orbit satellite magnetometer.