Flight Results of GPS-Based Attitude Determination for the Microsatellite Flying-Laptop

A. Hauschild, U. Mohr, M. Markgraf and O. Montenbruck

Abstract:	The paper presents attitude determination results obtained with the ”GPS Enhanced Navigation system for the University of Stuttgart micro satellite” (GENIUS) onboard ”Flying Laptop”. Real flight data has been collected in different measurement campaigns. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated in the presence of typical satellite attitude maneuvers. It is shown that the major sources of errors are offsets and variations of the differential antenna phase-patterns. The variations depend on azimuth and elevation angle of the line-of-sight vector to the tracked satellite. They lead to systematic errors in the carrier-phase single-differences on the order of a few tens of millimeters. These errors translate into attitude errors up to 1 degree. It will be demonstrated how much these errors can be mitigated by in-flight calibration based on carrier-phase measurement residuals. The flight results will be compared to the pre-launch ground tests and simulations performed, which will provide valuable insight into how realistically the flight performance can be predicted before launch.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2018 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 29 - 1, 2018 Hyatt Regency Reston Reston, Virginia
Pages:	578 - 588
Cite this article:	Hauschild, A., Mohr, U., Markgraf, M., Montenbruck, O., "Flight Results of GPS-Based Attitude Determination for the Microsatellite Flying-Laptop," Proceedings of the 2018 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Reston, Virginia, January 2018, pp. 578-588. https://doi.org/10.33012/2018.15536
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