Autonomous Navigation Technology. Phase IA Study.

Abstract

The program objective has been to provide the design of a space navigation system for unmanned earth satellites. The system is required to provide accurate determination of the ephemeris state and to be autonomous. The equations of motion of the satellite are integrated using a detailed model of the earth's gravitational field. The effects of residual errors in the gravity field, unmodeled forces, and uncertainties in initial conditions are reduced by measurements. The selected approach employs two down sensors to track unidentified earth landmarks surface; this unknown tracking method obtains to line of sight angular velocity (V/h). The Phase I objective was to design and test an engineering model down sensor, a strapdown telescope. The measurement is obtained by digital correlation of signals from photodetector arrays in its image plane.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA008649

Entities

People

  • D. C. Paulson

Organizations

  • Honeywell International, Inc.

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Satellites
  • Autonomous Navigation
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • Ephemerides
  • Equations
  • Equations Of Motion
  • Gravitational Fields
  • Gravity
  • Line Of Sight
  • Mathematics
  • Measurement
  • Navigation
  • Photodetectors
  • Residuals
  • Space Navigation

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Inertial Navigation Systems.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Orbital Debris