SAMARA, November 2. /TASS/. Students of Samara National Research University (Samara University) have developed and tested a prototype stabilization system for picosatellites - spacecraft with a mass between 100 grams and 1 kg, the university's press service told TASS. The design was found to stabilize the orientation of the vehicles in flight.
"After the rocket has taken the picosatellite to the target altitude, a sensor is triggered and a miniature electric motor with a flywheel on the axis is launched inside the spacecraft for one minute at a certain rate of rotation. This provides uniaxial stabilization of the satellite in space so that it is less wobbly in flight and so that it can, for example, take a video or photo, as it did during these tests, and get sharper, smoother footage. That is, stabilization is obtained by creating torque of spinning weight, like in a bicycle wheel - the faster you ride a bicycle, the easier it is to keep your balance. The tests showed that this idea turned out to be quite viable for a pico-satellite," said Alexei Kumarin, head of the Cosmic Gradient Club of the Korolev University of Samara.
The atmospheric tests were held during the Space Gradient launch campaign on the territory of university's yacht club on the Volga island of Proran. A total of three homemade experimental rockets were launched into the sky, which took three pico-satellites assembled by club members to a hundred-meter altitude into the Earth's atmosphere.
Without a system of orientation and stabilization the satellites would not be able to perform their tasks - to monitor the Earth's surface, to transmit and retransmit signals. The university noted that an effective system for orientation and stabilization of a pico-satellite is quite difficult because of its limited size. For this purpose it is necessary to fit various sensors, systems and payloads into a case the size of a can. Students from Samara have so far developed a stabilization system that helps keep the hull stable along one axis during the flight.
One of the students at the Institute of Aviation and Aerospace Engineering at Samara University, Polina Yakovleva, created three rockets from scratch for the launch, as well as a launcher, an initiating console for remote fuse ignition, and successfully conducted test launches. "The rocket launches at the Intensive were a very demanding endeavor, because without the rockets, the satellites would not fly. Modeling the rockets, building them and building the launch equipment started back in the summer and lasted until mid-October. For me as a member of the launch team, the launches themselves were very exciting: the results of the entire intensive depended on our work. And we managed to do it: none of the participants' vehicles crashed," the press service quotes Yakovleva as saying.