ATTITUDE DYNAMICS OF THE SMALL EXPENDABLE-TETHER DEPLOYMENT SYSTEM

The Small Expendable-Tether Deployment System (SEDS) provides a low-co st facility for deploying tethered payloads in space. Among various ob jectives, SEDS' first flight will assess the capability of tethered pl atforms to carry out measurements in the upper atmosphere. The perform ance of onboard instruments is seriously affected by the payload's att itude dynamics. In this paper, SEDS' attitude dynamics and stability a re analytically and numerically analysed for the nominal mission. It i s shown that although a passive damper can be used to reduce the ampli tudes of the attitude angles, appropriate control techniques are requi red for scientific instrumented platforms.