Attitude Determination with only One Reference Vector for On-Orbit Spin Stabilized Geostationary Satellites
- Paper number
IAC-07-C1.8.09
- Author
Mr. Yuheng Li, Xidian University, China
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Spin stabilized satellite platform, with its simplicity and stabilization, is still widely used for spacecrafts, especially for geostationary meteorological satellites such as China FY-2 and Europe MSG-1, whose attitude’s accuracy affects the navigation precision of image scanned by the on-board scanning radiometer. Generally speaking, for the sake of application, the attitude of a spin stabilized satellite is asked to plumb to the orbital normal. The requirement leads a requirement to accurately determine the orientation of spin axis in space. Traditional algorithms used to determinate the attitude of spin stabilized satellites are based on two observation reference vectors, one from the satellite to earth and the other from the satellite to the sun. Then, limit is imposed on the terms of geometry measurement and the error of measurements will be enlarged as two vectors get close. Taken full advantage of geostationary character, a novel algorithm which bases only on one vector is presented here. Compared with the traditional method, the limit on geometry measurement of the traditional method can be lifted. Then with differential values of data measured by an on-board infrared sensor being used to computer the attitude, the new algorithm can eliminate the system measure error caused by inaccurate assembling of the earth sensor and the mass distribution change of the satellite in space. Therefore the accuracy of the attitude determined by the new method is high. The new method is simple, stable and low-cost. It has been successfully used to determinate and control the attitude of China on-orbit spin stabilized geostationary satellites (FY-2 series) since 2005. Compared with 0.2º previously computed by the tradition algorithm, the accuracy of attitude calculated by our new method has reached to 0.01º. Meanwhile, with the more accurate attitude, the navigation precision of FY-2’S image is improved significantly.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-C1.8.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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