Remote Sensing Based Methods to Retrieve UVSQ-SAT Cubesat Attitude to
Map the Earth's Radiation Budget.
Abstract
The terrestrial energy balance represents a measure of the excess energy
stored in the climate system. A possible measurement of this variable
can be made at the top of the atmosphere by quantifying the imbalance
between the incoming solar flux and the outgoing reflected and infrared
flux. This is the objective of the UltraViolet and infrared Sensors at
high Quantum efficiency on-board a small SATellite (UVSQ-SAT) mission,
validating miniaturized technologies on-board a CubeSat with 1U
standards (about 11 cm x 11 cm x 11 cm). This satellite was put into
orbit in January 2021 by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launcher and is totally
functional. In order to measure the various fluxes with accuracy it is
necessary to know precisely the orientation of the satellite at each
time. Indeed, the knowledge of this orientation makes it possible to
dissociate the various fluxes and to correct them from the angle to the
considered source (Earth, Sun). To do so, two methods were implemented
to retrieve the satellite’s attitude based on Sun and Nadir pointing
along with inertial measurement unit (IMU) data. To ensure more accurate
knowledge of the attitude determination in every configuration (daylight
and eclipse), neural networks were implemented based on the available
sensors. A multilayer perceptron was thus trained in order to find the
orientation of the satellite. Based on the attitude retrieved the
different flux were computed at each time from the sensors signals. We
present here the development and the outcomes of the neural network
applied to in-orbit data recovered from the UVSQ-SAT mission.