Earth’s Magnetic Field for Spacecraft Attitude Control Applications

In this paper the earth’s magnetic field is simulated precisely while the intensity and direction of the field are verified with one of the standard references for selected points on the earth and the results are compared with some low-order models. In another simulation, the complete model is compared with acommon approximate model. The magnetic field in orbital frame is described and to employ earth’s magnetic field in spacecraft attitude control applications, it is transferred into the spacecraft bodyframe. Transformation between orbital frame and body frame can be linear or nonlinear; the validity oflinear transformation is investigated regarding various attitude angles. The divergence plots and the plot and table of error percentage illustrate the result based on the defined acceptable error

Keywords:

Earth’s Magnetic Field , Spacecraft Attitude Control , Linear and Nonlinear Transformation , Orbital Frame , Body Frame