Gyroless attitude estimation of sun-pointing satellites using magnetometers

Author

Ahn, Hyo-Sung ; Lee, Seon-Ho

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Utah State Univ., Logan, UT, USA

Volume

2

Issue

1

fYear

2005

Firstpage

8

Lastpage

12

Abstract

Deterministic attitude estimation methods based on vector observations are used for the coarse-attitude calculation of the sun-pointing satellites. The objective of the deterministic attitude estimation is to get the direction cosine matrix without considering the stochastic noises. The existing deterministic attitude estimation methods require two complete (three-axis) vector observations corresponding to two known reference vectors. This letter suggests a new deterministic attitude estimation method using only geomagnetic-field measurements on two axes for sun-pointing satellites in the sun-acquisition mode.

Keywords

artificial satellites; attitude measurement; magnetometers; coarse-attitude calculation; deterministic attitude estimation methods; direction cosine matrix; geomagnetic-field measurements; gyroless attitude estimation; magnetometers; reference vectors; sun-acquisition mode; sun-pointing satellites; three-axis vector observations; Earth; Extraterrestrial measurements; Gyroscopes; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetic sensors; Magnetometers; Position measurement; Satellites; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Sun;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2004.840608

Filename

1381338