ANALYSIS OF AN INTERPLANETARY LINE-OF-SIGHT GUIDANCE TECHNIQUE.
Abstract
A simplified guidance scheme using the line-of-sight to the target as the controlling parameter is investigated. Deviations of the line-of-sight from a precomputed reference form the basis of the technique. Two Mars trajectories and one Venus trajectory are perturbed due to injection errors from their reference trajectories. The astronaut is capable of manually computing the corrections with elementary mathematics, the use of reference tables and a slide rule. This technique can serve as a back up guidance scheme in case of an onboard computer failure. With the simplicity of this scheme, miss distances of 1,200,000 kilometers were reduced to 300 kilometers at a cost of less than 400 meters per second. In a number of cases accuracies within 30 kilometers were achieved.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1965
- Accession Number
- AD0614675
Entities
People
- John Charles Ruth
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology