Dither Gyro Scale Factor Calibration: GOES-16 Flight Experience

This poster is a sequel to a paper presented at the 34th Annual AAS Guidance and Control Conference in 2011, which first introduced dither-based calibration of gyro scale factors. The dither approach uses very small excitations, avoiding the need to take instruments offline during gyro scale factor calibration. In 2017, the dither calibration technique was successfully used to estimate gyro scale factors on the GOES-16 satellite. On-orbit dither calibration results were compared to more traditional methods using large angle spacecraft slews about each gyro axis, requiring interruption of science. The results demonstrate that the dither technique can estimate gyro scale factors to better than 2000 ppm during normal science observations.