In-flight gyro drift rate calibration on the Viking OrbitersThe drift rates of the attitude control gyros onboard the Viking Orbiters were calibrated several times during flight. The calibration was performed by engaging the gyro control of attitude for a six-hour period, recording the Viking Orbiter coordinates of the sun and the roll reference star as a function of time, and processing these data by a computer program. The computer program calculated drift rates for each data increment, and then smoothed the calculated rate versus the time function for all the data on the basis of a Gauss-Markov gyro-drift model. The effects of data noise were minimized by using a relatively long time constant in the Gauss-Markov model and by empirically determining a set of corrections for celestial inertial scale factor error differences. In this way the rms error of the data fit was lessened.
Document ID
19780048018
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Breckenridge, W. G. (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Treder, A. J. (California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena Calif., United States)