Spacecraft Center of Mass Estimation Based on Only one Accelerometer and one Gyro

Center of mass (CM) identification is a necessary task for spacecraft attitude and orbit control. In this paper a new method for CM estimation is proposed which is based on one gyro and one accelerometer. In this method angular acceleration is not used. For exciting the spacecraft attitude, an active torque is not employed and the angular velocity is changed during the time because of the cross coupling effect in the spacecraft dynamics. The simulation results show that the CM estimation is done precisely that can be used in spacecraft attitude and orbit control

Keywords:

Center of mass estimation , angular velocity , angular acceleration , gyro , accelerometer