(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-14)
Harathi, Abhijit
The Tethering And Ranging mission of the Georgia Institute of Technology (TARGIT) is
a CubeSat mission that aims to demonstrate target detection and tracking via LiDAR and other
sensors. A 3U CubeSat will be deployed from the ISS. After going through system checkouts and
other procedures, it will deploy and inflate a tetrahedron-shaped target. The CubeSat will image
and track the target with sensors in order to keep it within its primary imager’s field of view. Once
it is a certain distance away, the CubeSat will use laser ranging technology to detect the target.
Throughout all this, the CubeSat will be going through other mission modes to charge up,
occasionally reduce its angular rates and stabilize itself, and keep a certain pointing configuration.
In order to achieve and transition between the different mission modes, TARGIT has an
attitude determination and control subsystem (ADCS) that maneuvers the spacecraft to and
maintains different pointing configurations based on the mission mode required. It uses sensors to
determine its orientation and it uses actuators to change or maintain its orientation as needed.