AAS 98-194

RESULTS OF STS-80 RELATIVE GPS NAVIGATION FLIGHT EXPERIMENT

E. R. Schiesser, J. P. Brazzel, Jr. - The Boeing Company; J. R. Carpenter, H. D. Hinkel - NASA Johnson Space Center

Abstract

NASA and the European Space Agency jointly conducted a relative GPS experiment during Space Transportation System flight 80 (STS-80), in December, 1996. The experiment included GPS receivers on the Orbiter and a deployable free-flyer. Data from four or five common GPS satellites were available during almost all of the final portion of rendezvous. A real-time Kalman filter was used to asynchronously process coarse/acquisition code pseudo-range measurements and IMU data. The resulting one sigma accuracy was on the order of 10 m for relative position, 0.15 m/s for relative velocity, and 100 m for relative semi-major axis, in comparison with laser tracking data.

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