Magnitude calibration of a fixed head star tracker using Astro-1 flight dataThe Astro-1 UV astronomy mission was hampered by the failures of the automatic star acquisition procedure. The acquisition procedure depended on the Instrument Pointing Subsystem's Fixed Head Star Trackers (FHST) to acquire, track and identify guidestars of known visual magnitude. During the Astro-1 mission it was suspected that the star magnitudes measured by the FHST were much lower than predicted. A postflight investigation of the Astro-1 flight data confirmed and quantified this suspicion. Star magnitude calibration curves computed from the flight data depict the variance from the preflight calibration curves. These results are helping engineers to plan improvements to the acquisition procedure for the upcoming Astro-2 mission.
Document ID
19920055964
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Rakoczy, John M. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
West, Mark E. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)