Development and Orbital Performance Verification of a Robotic Pico Satellite

Abstract

Recently, many amateure pico satelites named "CubeSat" were launched and are under developing in the world. Kagawa University developed a robotic pico satellite named "STARS". STARS was developed for technical verification and evaluation of a tethered space robot proposed in 1995. This paper especially focuses on the daughter satellite, whish is a tethered space robot. The downsizing robotic system, which has a defferential gear joint mechanism for two degrees of freedom, was designed for STARS, and the robotic control system available for a pico satellite was installed. STARS was launched by the H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima, Japan on January 23, 2009. After confirming the condition from the housekeeping telemetry that robotic motion was possible on orbit, the arm link motion by the developed small joint mechanism, and the robotic control based on the feedback information of the gyro sensors, were performed. Although attitude control of a tethered space robot could not be performed because tether was not extended enough, the main functions for the robotic pico satellite were verified and evaluated.