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Within the next couple of years, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) will start the deployment of its next-generation geostationary meteorological satellites. The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) is composed of four imaging (MTG-I) and two sounding (MTG-S) platforms. The satellites are three-axis stabilized, unlike the two previous generations of Meteosat that were spin stabilized, and carry two sets of remote sensing instruments each. Hence, in addition to providing continuity, the new system will provide an unprecedented capability from geostationary orbit. The payload on the MTG-I satellites are the 16-channel Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) and the Lightning Imager (LI). The payloads on the MTG-S satellites are the hyperspectral Infrared Sounder (IRS) and a high-resolution Ultraviolet–Visible–Near-Infrared (UVN) sounder Sentinel-4/UVN, provided by the European Commission. Today, hyperspectral sounding from geostationary orbit is provided by the Chinese Fengyun-4A (FY-4A) satellite Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS) instrument, and lightning mappers are available on FY-4A and on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites. Consequently, the development of science and applications for these types of instruments have a solid foundation. However, the IRS, LI, and Sentinel-4/UVN are a challenging first for Europe in a geostationary orbit. The four MTG-I and two MTG-S satellites are designed to provide 20 and 15.5 years of operational service, respectively. The launch of the first MTG-I is expected at the end of 2022 and the first MTG-S roughly a year later. This article describes the four instruments, outlines products and services, and addresses the evolution of the further applications.

P237; 静止轨道遥感卫星与地面处于相对静止状态,但因受到内外部环境的影响,会使得其对地指向发生几何偏差,从而在地面上产生较大的定位误差,因此需要进行有效的修正.本文围绕三轴稳定型静止轨道遥感卫星拍摄地球圆盘时的指向确定问题,提出了一套基于地标匹配的指向计算方法,其中重点解决了作为基准参考的地标数据生成方法、稳健的图像与地标匹配方法,以及基于误差剔除的指向偏差计算方法等.试验表明,该方法对于解决静止轨道遥感图像指向偏差具有较好的精度和稳定性.该技术已经在我国相关卫星数据的在线处理中得到应用.

This paper introduces a method of monitoring infrared channel calibration stability through direct comparison of calibrated radiances by two Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on two geostationary (GEO) platforms. This GEO-GEO comparison is based on radiances in the overlapping area observed by the two ABIs, pixel by pixel, at approximately the same time, location, spectrum, and viewing zenith angle. It was initially developed for GOES-17 and subsequent GOES missions to validate the ABI’s calibration around its local midnight—a subject of particular interest for instruments on three-axis stabilized geostationary satellites. With the cryocooler anomaly of the GOES-17 ABI, however, the GEO-GEO comparison became an indispensable tool to characterize GOES-17 ABI infrared (IR) channel calibration with high frequency, low uncertainty, and in near real time, providing critical feedback to root cause investigation and mitigation options. Later, the GEO-GEO comparison was applied to the GOES-18 ABI as originally intended and was proved successful. It confirms that, with few exceptions, radiometric calibration for all ABIs is stable to within 0.1 K when the radiance fluctuation is converted to the brightness temperature at 300 K.

One of the most challenging tasks at the early stage of satellite programs is fitting various stowed satellite configurations within different launcher envelopes to dissipate heat from the satellite. To overcome this thermal challenge, this paper proposes a practical launcher thermal analysis tool (PLTAT). The aim of this tool is to predict satellite dimension and the launcher type based on the heat dissipation requirement. The study focused on three-axis stabilized geostationary communications satellites, and north and south panels were used for heat dissipation by radiation. The remaining panels of the satellite were covered by a multilayer insulation. In the calculations, the solar arrays were placed at the north and south panels while antennas were placed at the east and west panels. The values obtained by the Excel-based VBA were compared with flying GEO satellites. Heat dissipation values calculated using PLTAT were compared with existing radiative area results. The minimum difference between the existing values and the PLTAT calculated values was 0.63%, whereas the maximum difference was 12.04%. The results from calculated PLTAT radiative areas were in agreement with existing radiative areas. Thus, PLTAT can be an alternative and useful approach when designing three-axis stabilized geostationary communications satellites.

In this paper, a finite-time three-axis stabilization controller for an underactuated rigid spacecraft is proposed based on well-designed hierarchical terminal sliding mode surfaces to handle the insufficiency of control effort and disturbances. Firstly, the attitude kinematic of an underactuated rigid spacecraft is parameterized by the w-z representation and the dynamic model with only two orthogonal torque inputs are presented. Secondly, based on the terminal sliding mode theory, a three-hierarchized sliding surface is established. A finite-time stable control law is derived by the Filippov equivalence theorem and the principle of sliding mode control. The finite-time stability is proved by the Lyapunov theory. Finally, the high performance of the proposed control approach is verified through numerical simulations and comparisons with state-of-the-art studies.

This paper presents an attitude stabilization algorithm for a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Earth-pointing spacecraft using magnetorquers as the only torque actuators and employing Model-Free Adaptive Control (MFAC) as the control algorithm. MFAC is a data-driven control algorithm that relies solely on input–output data from the plant. This paper validates the effectiveness of the proposed approach through numerical simulations in a specific case study. The simulations show that the proposed algorithm drives the spacecraft’s attitude to three-axis stabilization in the orbital frame from arbitrary initial tumbling conditions. The numerical study also shows that the proposed control algorithm outperforms a model-based Proportional–Derivative (PD) control in terms of pointing accuracy at the expense of higher energy consumption.

This paper considers the problem of a three-axis flexible satellite attitude stabilisation subject to the vibration of flexible appendages and external environmental disturbances, which affect the rigid body motion. To solve this problem, a disturbance observer is proposed to estimate and thereby reject the flexible appendage vibration. Based on the H ∞ and Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) approach, a controller for spacecraft with flexible appendages is proposed to ensure robustness as well as attitude stability with high precision. Stability analysis of the overall closed-loop system is provided via the Lyapunov method. The simulation results of three-axis flexible spacecraft demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Energetic electron measurement is of great significance to theoretical space physics research and space weather applications. Current energetic electron detectors must cooperate with a spin-stabilized satellite platform to achieve high angular resolution in pitch angle distribution and three-dimensional (3D) imaging measurement of energetic electrons. This article introduces a crosstype quasi-3D imaging electron spectrometer (IES) based on pinhole imaging technology developed in the laboratory. The imager is composed of five imaging units, including a nine-pixel area array Si-PIN detector imaging unit in the middle and four three-pixel linear array Si-PIN detector imaging units placed in a cross-shape around it. The combination of five imaging units forms two orthogonal nine-pixel linear array detectors (with a common pixel in the middle). There are four pixels with a view angle of 20° × 20° in the 45° oblique directions of the cross-type detection array. There are 21 imaging pixels in the entire cross-type sensor head, corresponding to 21 directions. Two multichannel integrated preamplifier ASICs are integrated in the sensor head to realize particle signal readout from 21 pixels. With a back-end electronics system, each pixel can achieve high energy resolution detection of 50–600 keV electrons. Radioactive sources and electron accelerators are used to calibrate the cross-type imaging sensor head, and the results demonstrate its good energy and directional detection characteristics (the energy resolution reaches 6.9 keV for the incident 200 keV electron beam). We performed simulations on the imaging sensor head’s ability to measure the electron pitch angle distribution on the three-axis stabilized platform, and the results show that the sensor head can perform quasi-three-dimensional detection of electrons incident within 2π solid angles on the three-axis stabilized satellite platform, with an average angular resolution of the electron pitch angle distribution of less than 6°.

Three-axis gravity stabilization of 3U CubeSat is achieved due to selection of the nanosatellite moments of inertia at the design stage, as well as special modes included in the algorithm to provide stabilization of CubeSat relative to each motion channel separately. In this paper, we propose a modified algorithm based on the magnetic stabilization algorithm B-dot. The modified algorithm provides three modes intended to damp the initial angular velocity to the value of the orbital angular velocity, to keep the angular velocity at a value close to that of the orbital angular velocity, and to provide the nanosatellite gravitational triaxial stabilization by using one magnetic coil located on the axis with the transversal moment of inertia, which is possible due to the small angle between the magnetic field line and the satellite's trajectory. We propose two modifications for forming a control loop for orientation and stabilization of the 3U CubeSat: the first one uses measurements from magnetometers and angular rate sensors as feedback, and the second one, only magnetometers. The efficiency of the two modifications of modifications was studied by means of statistical modeling.

In order to coordinate the transverse motion control and longitudinal motion control in the tracking control process and ensure the yaw stability and roll stability in the tracking process, a transverse and longitudinal coordinated control method of three-axis heavy vehicles is designed based on model predictive control. The lateral motion controller is designed based on the phase plane method. The upper controller calculates the front wheel angle and additional yaw moment, which ensures the yaw stability while tracking the vehicle. The lower controller calculates the driving force and braking force of the three-axis heavy vehicle. The velocity planning method is designed with the coupling point of longitudinal velocity to coordinate the lateral and longitudinal motion controllers and prevent vehicle rollover. By building the vehicle model in Trucksim (2016.1) and establishing the horizontal and vertical coordination control in Matlab (R2016b), the designed horizontal and vertical coordination control method is simulated and verified. The simulation results show that the designed method can accurately track the reference trajectory while ensuring the yaw stability and roll stability of the three-axis heavy vehicle.