Satellite Attitude Control Project

I served as Risk and Manufacturing Lead for a "torque coil" prototype for UCLA's first satellite. The team wanted to assess the response capability of a coil that used aluminum wire when subjected to a magnetic field.


The coil was designed to spin "rotissere style" on one axis in response to a change in magnetic field. We had to add a stabilizing rod to round out the moment of inertia.

Below is a Solidworks model I developed for the full experimental setup.  The current in the red coil would be controlled by the DC power source. The large black coil would then turn on, and we would expect our red coil to rotate 90 degrees to align with this new magnetic field, which we would measure using the protractor block.

Our 3D printed coil. We achieved a 90 degree turn in response to a field of 20 gauss in under one second! Our final presentation was delivered to aerospace engineers at NASA JPL.