Radar System Design for Spacecraft Terminal Control

This paper discusses the design of radar for use in the terminal control of manned and umanned space vehicles of the maneuverable type. In order to present the requirements and specifications of the required radar, the type of missions that will use terminal control are discussed. Also terminal control equipment suchl as analogue computers and displays are mentioned in preserting these specifications. The main body of the paper deals with specific areas of radar development resulting from recent work in developing a terminal control system for the umanned X-20 vehicle. The technical areas discussed are reliability of self-acquisition, pulse code modulated (PCM) data transmission, semidigital ranging, and the accuracy of computed velocity, altitude and positional data.