General-purpose ground test system for the attitude determination and control subsystem of pico/nano-satellite

Over the past decades the pico/nano-satellite (PNS) has gradually become an important direction of small satellites. As a crucial subsystem of PNS, the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) should pass a full set of strict ground tests before launch. Due to the low cost and short period of PNS manufacturing process, as well as the requirement of “test while designing”, this paper presents a general-purpose ground test system (GPGTS) for the ADCS of PNS, which is mainly composed of a dynamics simulation module, an on-orbit data handling (OBDH) simulator module and a data management module. With the consideration of generality and extendibility, the test system is capable of testing ADCSs for various kinds of PNSs in different manufacturing phases.