ON THE USE OF A MAGNETOMETER TO DETERMINE THE ANGULAR MOTION OF A SPINNING BODY IN REGULAR PRECESSION

摘要

An analysis is presented which deals with the use of an onboard magnetometer for determining the motion of spinning bodies in uniform precession.nCalculated curves for the variation of the magnetometer reading with time are shown for several different coning angles and orientations and also for dif¬ferent angles between the magnetometer axis and the body axes;these curves are ' used as illustrations of magnetometer-signal traces in the analysis and discus¬sion. In particular, it is shown how the envelopes of these curves may be anal¬yzed to yield the body coning angle and the angle between the earth's local magnetic field vector and the angular-momentum vector of the body.