Change of Inertia Tensor Due to a Severed Radial Boom for Spinning Spacecraft

Abstract

Many spinning spacecraft have long, flexible, radial booms to carry science instrumentation. These radial booms often have low mass but contribute significantly to the spacecraft moment of inertia due to their length. There are historical cases where radial booms have been severed or have failed to deploy. This paper presents models for the center of mass (CM) and inertia tensor that account for variable boom geometry and investigates how the CM and inertia tensor change when a radial boom is severed.The CM and inertia tensor models presented here will be included in the Attitude Ground System (AGS) for the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. This work prepares the AGS to provide uninterrupted support in the event of a radial boom anomaly. These models will improve the AGS computations for spin-axis precession prediction, Kalman filter propagation for the definitive attitude, and mass property generation needed for the onboard control system. As an additional application, a method is developed for approximating the location on the boom where the break occurred based on the new models and readily observable attitude parameters