Reaction wheel Parameter Identification

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Microsat Systems Canada Inc. (referred to as 'MSCI hereinafter) is a privately held Canadian corporation basedin Mississauga, Ontario. MSCI is a world-renowned premiere builder of microsatellites in Canada over the pasttwo decades with worldwide track record in attitude control system (ACS) design, ACS sensors and actuators.In particular, MSCI's reaction wheels - critical component in ACS actuator suite - have been launched and areoperational in orbit, with over 216 years of accumulated flight heritage and 58 billion revolutions withoutfailure [1]. Our research team at York University is proposing to extend our current ACS research to examinereaction wheel parameter identification with special interest in MSCI's reaction wheels. We propose to developa novel method to characterize the wheels' performance and estimate the moment of inertia of the reactionwheel's rotor, which is considered a key parameter in providing a higher accuracy attitude control. Theproposed research is in direct support of MSCI's current efforts to improve the manufacturing and testing theirreaction wheels. We aim to provide reliable and cost-effective means to better evaluate the wheels'performance and advice on cost-saving methods for manufacturing of such commercial products.While we have made significant progress towards developing advanced determination and control algorithmsdesigned to compensate for uncertainty in attitude control hardware, there still exist significant gap in sensorand actuator modeling. For example, there is still a great need for high-fidelity actuator model and estimationof actuator parameters to achieve arc-second level pointing accuracy on small spacecraft. The contribution ofthis study is in developing novel and reliable ways to model attitude actuator. In particular, we propose todevelop a methodology for modeling reaction wheels and estimate their key immeasurable parameters.