Boom Deployment Angle Estimation and On-orbit Operation Results of ETS-VIII Large Deployable Reflectors

Abstract

Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII) is equipped with two large deployable reflectors (receiver (RX) and transmitter (TX) LDRs) that are deployed on orbit. The deployment sequence consists of two steps: one is the boom deployment step and the other is the reflector deployment step. The results of deployment at each step is monitored by a camera attached to the satellite. In order to deal with off-nominal scenarios due to camera malfunctions, the boom deployment angle is estimated from the telemetry data obtained from the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) as well as the images captured by the camera. This paper deals with the estimation of the boom deployment angle from the AOCS telemetry data; further, the results of the on-orbit deployment are presented.