Analysis of electrodynamic tether deployment impacting on the attitude of tether and main-satellite

A study on the dynamic characters and stability of the electrodynamic tether(EDT) system during deploying phase is conducted.The dynamics model of the EDT is established with taken the deformation and tension of tether into consideration.The system’s equilibrium conditions are also derived according to second order linear system.Considering the impact of the gravity gradient torque and the impact of the libration and tension variation of the tether,the stability of attitude of main-satellite under different deployment strategies is researched.Finally,series numerical simulations are performed:deployments of uniform velocity and uniform acceleration lead to instability of the main-satellite with its attitude viberated;deployment of power index can resist external disturbance effectively with the attitude of the main-satellite rapid stable.Under what conditions the deformation of the tether could be neglected is calculated,which could provide ideas of control and deploy strategies for the EDT system.