A two-axis pointing system for an orbiting astronomical instrument

摘要

The system described was built for incorporation into a solar flare X-ray instrument due to be orbited as one of a number of instruments on the NASA Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) satellite in late 1979. It enables the instrument to be rotated about 2 mutually perpendicular axes in 5 arc-second steps within a range of 7 arc-minutes, thus giving the instrument the capability to map areas of the sun.