Abstract
Sailcraft come with the significant promise to propel spacecraft using photons reflecting on large reflective surface. Paramount to the success of these spacecraft is the need to miniaturize subsystems as much as possible in order to maximize the solar sail's performance characteristics. The paper examines the availability of advanced small satellite technology and presents an analysis on utilizing miniature small satellite bus technology for near-term solar sail missions. A satellite bus Attitude Control System is presented and the problem of angular momentum dumping due to the constant solar radiation disturbance is analysed. A magnetic control logic is presented and simulation results show the ability to successfully control excessive angular momentum build up to a small band of values using small satellite size magnetorquers, thus making substantial mass savings to the sailcraft design. Copyright © 2006 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.