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Effective direction measurements for spacecraft attitude: III. Defective directions and data fusion

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Yet better the excess than the defect. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) Morituri Salutamus (1875)

Abstract

Two effective measurements are examined which represent attitude information defectively, that is, part of the information is discarded in the effective measurement. These effective measurements are tested for the fusion of a star-tracker attitude estimate with a direction measurement from a vector Sun sensor. The defective directions tested are the Brozenec-Bender vector and those in the prescription of Bar-Itzhack and Harman. These are compared with maximum-likelihood estimation based on all measurements and with the startracker attitude estimate alone. Naturally, the approximate algorithms do not perform as well as maximum-likelihood estimation without approximation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Acme Spacecraft Company, 13017 Wisteria Drive, Box 328, Germantown, 20874, Maryland, USA

    Malcolm D. Shuster (Director of Research)

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  1. Malcolm D. Shuster
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Correspondence to Malcolm D. Shuster.

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Shuster, M.D. Effective direction measurements for spacecraft attitude: III. Defective directions and data fusion. J of Astronaut Sci 55, 493–510 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03256538

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