EPOXI FINE GUIDANCE ARCHITECTURE AND OPERATION

摘要

The Deep Impact spacecraft was launched January 2005 and has subsequently executed close flybys of two comets: 9P/Tempel and 103P/Hartley. The Deep Impact spacecraft is equipped with three science instruments: a high resolution visible imager (HRI), a medium resolution visible imager (MRI), and a high resolution infra-red spectrometer. This paper describes the software architecture being put in place to use the MRI to provide high accuracy stellar inertial reference measurements. Combining these "Fine Guidance" measurements with the Scalable Space Inertial Reference Unit (SSIRU) yields a pointing stability of 0.5 μrad lσ and a pointing accuracy of approximately 5 μrad 3σ.