Digital attitude control for NASA sounding rockets

Carlos Martinez

doi:10.1117/12.330252

2 November 1998 Digital attitude control for NASA sounding rockets

Carlos Martinez

Proceedings Volume 3442, Missions to the Sun II; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.330252
Event: SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1998, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Various configurations of Solar Pointing Control Systems have been used for NASA sounding rockets since an initial flight in December of 1967. Until now, these attitude control systems have used an analog controller. The demand for a more advanced attitude control system with better performance and flexibility leads to the testing of a digital control system. Computer aided design was used to develop the control equations and an embedded controller is used to implement these equations. The analog control system pointing performance was degraded by electrical noise and offsets getting into the sensor signals. The solution to this problem was to isolate the sun sensor from payload electrical nose and ground loops. To accomplish this the sun sensor output was digitized and the data was sent to the control system using a fiber optical cable. This control system was flown on Naval Research Laboratories rocket 36.140 and had less than 0.5 arc-second peak-to-peak jitter during the flight. With further refinements the digital system is expected to attain jitter of less than 0.2 arc- seconds peak-to-peak.

Citation Download Citation

Carlos Martinez "Digital attitude control for NASA sounding rockets", Proc. SPIE 3442, Missions to the Sun II, (2 November 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.330252

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