MG13 - Talk detail |
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Participant |
Bencze, William | |||||||
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Institution |
Coherent Navigation, Inc. - 1800 Gateway Dr. #160 - San Mateo - CA - USA | |||||||
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Session |
SG4 |
Accepted |
Yes |
Order |
7 |
Time |
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Talk |
Oral abstract |
Title |
GP-B Precision Control Systems: Gyro Suspension and Drag Free Control | |||||
| Co-authors | GP-B team | |||||||
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Abstract |
The GP-B spacecraft has at its heart the most precise gyroscopes ever created, with drift rates 5e-7 below the best modeled inertial navigation gyros. They consisted of 38 mm electrically suspended fused quartz spheres coated with niobium kept at all times in supreme isolation from their environment. This talk will review two critical control systems for the experiment: 1) the gyro suspension system and 2) the spacecraft drag free controller. The two systems work together to keep the gyros running during experiment setup, micrometeorite impacts, and soft computer failures and well as permitting initial alignment of the rotors spin axes at experiment set up. The two systems successfully maintained the gyros during the entire mission and combined to give an experiment cross-track acceleration of 4e-12 g. |
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