We contributed to a paper and presentation at the ESA GNC & ICATT 2026 conference (28 September – 2 October 2026, Seville) on the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) verification of the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) of Türkiye’s first domestic geostationary communications satellite platform.
The paper describes the HIL setup used in ground verification: a real-time simulator propagates the attitude and orbit dynamics and exchanges data with engineering- and flight-model hardware through a star tracker stimulator, gyroscope interfaces or the spacecraft bus. Reaction-wheel effects are derived from measured wheel-speed telemetry, and thruster commands are applied in the simulation without opening the valves.
The paper also covers the test scenarios, from separation, rate damping and Sun acquisition to orbit raising, momentum unloading, station-keeping, equipment switching and selected fault detection, isolation and recovery actions, and discusses the limitations found and proposed improvements to timing synchronisation, actuator modelling and disturbance modelling.
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Image: block diagram of the AOCS HIL test setup, figure 2 of the paper (© ESA GNC & ICATT Conference 2026).