An inexpensive Attitude Determination system for the Uruguayan Cubesat, AntelSat

This paper discusses the design and development of an Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) for the first Uruguayan nanosatellite, AntelSat, which is being built at UdelaR University in Uruguay. The satellite consists of a twounit (2U) Cubesat, which implies that the ADCS is designed under tight mass, size and energy constraints. For the attitude determination section, data available from sensors is taken as inputs for the computation of an optimal quaternion estimator. The use of an unscented Kalman filter is also discussed. The selection of hardware and algorithms is addressed. Though observing the system requirements and restrictions, the results display that it is possible to attain reasonable attitude estimation without the need for expensive sensor setups.