• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.10
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• pp.853-861
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• 2016

This paper deals with a new technique utilizing the angular speed of the reaction wheels to determine attitudes and angular rates for gyroless satellites. The suggested algorithm in this study is designed to determine the precise attitude and angular rates under actual space environments by the support of the angular speeds of reaction wheels based on the extended Kalman filter. Furthermore, the proposed approach is also designed to estimate not only the attitude and angular rates of spacecraft but the external disturbances. The numerical simulation was conducted for gyloless spacecraft installed with four reaction wheels of the pyramid-type configuration. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by using numerical simulations.