Study for femto satellites using micro Control Moment Gyroscope

Femto-satellites can be used for distributed space missions that can require hundreds to thousands of satellites for real time, distributed, multi-point networks to accomplish remote sensing and science objectives. While suitable sensors are available using micro-electro-mechanical system technology, most femto-satellite designs have no attitude control capability due to the power and size constraints on attitude control actuators. A novel femto-satellite design that uses a micro-electro-mechanical system Control Moment Gyroscope is studied in this paper. We focus on the principal design, modelling, and discussion of the proposed Control Moment Gyroscope while detailing a controllable femto-satellite design that can make use of attitude control for simple sensing missions.