Attitude determination for balloon-borne experiments
Abstract
An attitude determination system for balloon-borne experiments is presented. The system provides pointing information in azimuth and elevation for instruments flying on stratospheric balloons over Antarctica. In-flight attitude is given by the real-time combination of readings from star cameras, a magnetometer, sun sensors, GPS, gyroscopes, tilt sensors and an elevation encoder. Post-flight attitude reconstruction is determined from star camera solutions, interpolated by the gyroscopes using an extended Kalman Filter. The multi-sensor system was employed by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol), an experiment that measures polarized thermal emission from interstellar dust clouds. A similar system was designed for the upcoming flight of SPIDER, a Cosmic Microwave Background polarization experiment. The pointing requirements for these experiments are discussed, as well as the challenges in designing attitude reconstruction systems for high altitude balloon flights. In the 2010 and 2012 BLASTPol flights from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, the system demonstrated an accuracy of <5' rms in-flight, and <5" rms post-flight.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1407.1883,
title = {Attitude determination for balloon-borne experiments},
author = {N. N. Gandilo and P. A. R. Ade and M. Amiri and F. E. Angile and S. J. Benton and J. J. Bock and J. R. Bond and S. A. Bryan and H. C. Chiang and C. R. Contaldi and B. P. Crill and M. J. Devlin and B. Dober and O. P. Dore and M. Farhang and J. P. Filippini and L. M. Fissel and A. A. Fraisse and Y. Fukui and N. Galitzki and A. E. Gambrel and S. Golwala and J. E. Gudmundsson and M. Halpern and M. Hasselfield and G. C. Hilton and W. A. Holmes and V. V. Hristov and K. D. Irwin and W. C. Jones and Z. D. Kermish and J. Klein and A. L. Korotkov and C. L. Kuo and C. J. MacTavish and P. V. Mason and T. G. Matthews and K. G. Megerian and L. Moncelsi and T. A. Morford and T. K. Mroczkowski and J. M. Nagy and C. B. Netterfield and G. Novak and D. Nutter and R. O'Brient and E. Pascale and F. Poidevin and A. S. Rahlin and C. D. Reintsema and J. E. Ruhl and M. C. Runyan and G. Savini and D. Scott and J. A. Shariff and J. D. Soler and N. E. Thomas and A. Trangsrud and M. D. Truch and C. E. Tucker and G. S. Tucker and R. S. Tucker and A. D. Turner and D. Ward-Thompson and A. C. Weber and D. V. Wiebe and E. Y. Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.1883},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
16 pages, 10 figures, Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, June 23, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9145