On-Orbit Time Transfer Performance of Gravity Probe B Relativity Mission

Jie Li, George M. Keiser, James M. Lockhart, Paul Shestople

Abstract:	"This paper discusses the on-orbit performance of time transfer between the vehicle time and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of the NASA/Stanford Gravity Probe B (GP-B) Relativity Mission. The GP-B satellite was successfully launched into orbit on April 20, 2004. As of May 31, 2005, day 406 of the mission, the GP-B timing system has been working very well on-orbit. Ground processing results show that the frequency offset of the clock onboard GP-B is less than 0.6 Hz and the frequency drift rate is less than 0.01Hz/hour, and the time transfer between the vehicle time and UTC is achieved at an accuracy of 2 microseconds."
Published in:	Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2005) June 27 - 29, 2005 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	457 - 463
Cite this article:	Li, Jie, Keiser, George M., Lockhart, James M., Shestople, Paul, "On-Orbit Time Transfer Performance of Gravity Probe B Relativity Mission," Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2005), Cambridge, MA, June 2005, pp. 457-463.
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