An Attitude Determination and Control (ADCS) provides measurements regarding a satellite's orbit and allows the satellite to change its inertial position.
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An Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) provides measurements regarding a satellite's orbit and allows the satellite to change its inertial position.
** A Kalman Filter is a probabilistic system that keeps track of a best estimate of its state (attitude) and its uncertainty, updating this estimate based on sensor inputs over time.
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* Sensors
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** Sensors could include star sensors, star trackers, IMUs, anything that gives the satellite measurements about its attitude. A large part of a building a well-functioning attitude determination and control system involves designing algorithms that preprocess and computes a sensor's estimate of the attitude based on its raw measurements (e.g. matching a picture taken by a star tracker to a star database).
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* Actuators
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** Actuators include any physical devices that allow for the rotation of the satellite. A key component of ADCS is to design and implement algorithms that compute optimal actuations to manipulate the attitude as intended.