A scheme for bandpass filtering magnetometer measurements to reconstruct tethered satellite skiprope motion

A scheme is presented for reconstructing tethered satellite skiprope motion by ground processing of satellite magnetometer measurements. The measurements are modified based on ground knowledge of the earth's magnetic field and passed through bandpass filters tuned to the skiprope frequency. Simulation results are presented which verify the scheme and show it to be quite robust. The concept is not just limited to tethered satellites. Indeed, it can be applied wherever there is a need to reconstruct the coning motion of a body about a known axis, given measurements of a known vector in body-fixed axes.