Absolute Navigation Performance of the Orion Exploration Flight Test 1

摘要

Launched in December 2014 atop a Delta IV Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center, the Orion vehicle's Exploration Flight Test 1 successfully completed the objective to stress the system by placing the uncrewed vehicle on a high-energy parabolic trajectory, replicating conditions similar to those that would be experienced when returning from an asteroid or a lunar mission. Unique challenges associated with designing the navigation system for Exploration Flight Test 1 are presented with an emphasis on how redundancy and robustness influenced the architecture. Two inertial measurement units, one GPS receiver, and three barometric altimeters comprise the navigation sensor suite. The sensor data are multiplexed, using conventional integration techniques, and the state estimate is refined by the GPS pseudo- and delta-range measurements in an extended Kalman filter that employs UDU factorization. The performance of the navigation system during flight is presented to substantiate the design.