Space Rockets, Polar Bears, and Tundra Buggies – And a GPS Link to the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

The use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for position and attitude determination has been exploited for many years. In these systems, it was required that multiple antennas maintained phase lock to common view satellites for long periods of time in order to determine integer ambiguities. The challenge to overcome with the ballistic space probe is the high rotational spin of this particular rocket. The antennas, mounted on the outside skin of the rocket, are in full view of each satellite only for a fraction of a second before the rocket core eclipses them as it rotates. The antennas rarely see common satellites. This article describes as system that overcomes these obstacles and provides position, acceleration, attitude, and rotation rate. The approach uses a two-antenna system. One antenna is mounted either side of the rocket facing out. A hybrid tracking channel combines signals from both antennas to overcome the signal blockage due to the rocket core as well as to defeat the effect on the tracking channel due to the spin. The amplitude and phase of the spin rotation signature from each satellite is extracted from the dual antenna data and used to compute the attitude and spin rate of the vehicle. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.