One of the main merits making a small satellite creation project so attractive is its relative low cost and rather short time of development, building and testing. From the technical point of view, economy is achieved by the optimal choice of the designing characteristics of the satellite. It is important to assess attitude control system characteristics as soon as possible and to make certain that they are adequate to technical and other requirements for the system. It appears reasonable to follow the following scheme of designing. Hardware structure is formed on the basis of attitude control system requirements. Attitude control system algorithms are chosen. Next, a mathematical model of the resulted system is constructed. The model is analyzed analytically and investi-gated numerically for stability testing, working regimes specification, determining the area of acceptable control parameters, determining critical exploitation conditions. Then a functional analog of the system is tested on a laboratory facility. And finally, flying tests are conducted. Currently, the Institute of Applied Mathematics is participating in projects concerning designing, testing and verification of the algorithms of the attitude control of microsatellites, in particular, of the «Chibis-M» microsatellite. In the framework of this projects, new magnetic stabilization algorithms are investigated, attitude determination algorithms are tested, including the use of laboratory facilities. As an example, test results on the working out of the initial angular velocity damping algorithm, satellite stabilization and reorientation using magnetic coils, the final precision orientation using reaction wheels are considered
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