AAS 95-300

Estimation of Rotating Body Attitude by Quaternion Filter

L. Meister (Aramanovitch), TH Darmstaddt, Germany

Abstract

A problem of optimal estimation of a rotating body attitude with both differential equation of motion and observations of stars is considered in quaternion form. Various algorithms for the problem based on matrix-vector representation or mixed matrix-vector and quaternion representation were investigated by many authors. Using the Lagrange multipliers' method the problem is solved analytically. It is shown that in accordance with a relative position of the observed stars the problem can have one, two, three or four types of solutions. All the types are represented in the paper.