Determination of sounding rocket position and attitude from radar and magnetometer data

The techniques are described that were used to determine the trajectories and orientations of three sounding rockets instrumented to study the aurora. The radar plot board data were fitted to a near earth expansion of the force of gravity to determine the trajectory. Only onboard magnetometer data were used to determine the attitude of the payload with respect to the earth's magnetic field. Computer programs in the FORTRAN language are available which generate the trajectory and attitude parameters.