Reaction wheels

Hardware

• BLDC motor with 3 integrated Hall sensors
• ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller (24 MHz)
• 6-axis Inertial Measurement Unit (3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope)

Interfaces

• I²C or UART communication interface (runtime configurable)
• CubeSat Space Protocol support 

Summary

The capability of performing extremely fine pointing maneuvers, high position accuracy, advanced attitude control including freeze mode, low vibration design and high energy efficiency make these Reaction Wheels ideal for low-GSD Earth observation CubeSat missions on 1U – 6U sized platforms.

Highlighted Features

Speed or torque control mode

Motor control optimized for low power usage

Fully automatic single-axis freeze mode

Wide range of self-diagnostic tools, including:

• current/voltage monitoring
• configurable software overcurrent protection
• automated motor performance evaluation
• in-orbit power consumption optimization

Improved radiation hardness features, including:

• ECC non-volatile memory
• radiation damage detection in all memory banks

Several degrees of redundancy within motor sensors and the possibility to run completely sensorless

Designed to reduce imbalance of the rotating parts

Low noise generation

Low-drift 3-axis gyroscope with built-in high-resolution temperature sensor

Runtime configurable I²C or UART communication interface with CSP support

5 or 8 V variants