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US 6,285,927 B1Granted
Spacecraft attitude determination system and method
AssigneeHughes Electronics Corporation
InventorsRongsheng Li, Yeong-Wei Andy Wu
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AssigneeHughes Electronics Corporation
InventorsRongsheng Li, Yeong-Wei Andy Wu
Estimating the term…
A method and system for minimizing attitude errors resulting from dynamic spacecraft maneuvers or time-varying mismatched attitude sensor measurements. The method includes time-tagging a primary attitude value from a primary attitude sensor and storing the value and associated time stamp in a buffer. A secondary attitude value, generated by a secondary attitude sensor, having a different associated time-stamp is then time-matched to the primary attitude valve. The corrected spacecraft attitude is then calculated as a function of the time-matched primary and secondary attitude values. In one aspect of the invention, the primary attitude sensor generates attitude data at a faster rate than the secondary attitude sensor. This primary attitude data is stored in a buffer such that, when the secondary attitude data becomes available, several nearest-in-time primary attitude data points are retrieved from the buffer. These data points are then used to interpolate a higher time-matched resolution data point. This, in turn, is used along with the secondary attitude data point in updating the spacecraft attitude.
A method of controlling the attitude of a spacecraft comprising the steps of:
An attitude control system for a spacecraft comprising:
In a spacecraft having an inertial attitude sensor operating on a first clock cycle, a stellar attitude sensor operating on a second clock cycle, a spacecraft control processor operating on a system clock, and a buffer, a method of controlling the attitude of said spacecraft comprising the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.