C. Von Braun et Em. Gaposchkin, Metric accuracy improvements of space-based visible using spacecraft attitude drift corrections, J GUID CON, 23(1), 2000, pp. 182-185
The Midcourse Space Experimentsatellite, sponsored by the Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization, was launched in April 1996 into an 898-km altitude,
near sun-synchronous orbit. One of the principal sensors onboard the spacec
raft is the Space-Based Visible, a visible-band, electro-optical camera des
igned to perform the first technical and functional demonstration of space
based space surveillance. The principal task of the Space-Based Visible is
to gather metric and photometric information on a wide variety of resident
space objects. To assess the metric performance of the sensor, routine on-o
rbit metric calibration is performed. In addition, a complete independent e
rror assessment was made using actual flight data. The goal of producing 4-
arc-s (1-sigma) observations of resident space objects was set during desig
n, and results show that this goal is being met. A method is presented that
improves the metric observations of resident space objects to better than
2-arc-s (1-sigma) by estimating the drift of the spacecraft attitude during
staring events and removing the effect from the observations. Compensating
for this error source brings into agreement the results of on-orbit calibr
ation and the independent error assessment.