Pointing and Stability Requirements for Earth Orbital Experiments

Experiments for manned and unmanned space facilities of the next decade will impose stringent requirements for accurately pointing and/or maintaining stability of the space platforms over extended periods. Potential experiment programs identified to date in various NASA-and contractor-sponsored studies have been reviewed in order to define critical values and ranges for the following pointing/stability parameters: 1) pointing accuracy, 2) line-of-sight stability, 3) angular rate, and/or 4) acceleration level. The most stringent requirements were found to be in the research categories of: stellar and solar astronomy, earth observations, space physics, communications and navigation, and space biology.