New method is continued for a spacecraft and analyzer, with a multiplier by application

摘要

1,059,807. Photo-electric direction finders. BENDIX CORPORATION. July 22, 1965 [July 29, 1964], No. 31281/65. Heading H4D. [Also in Division H1] In a method of controlling the attitude of a space vehicle relative to a light source, e.g. a star or planet, an image of the light source is projected on to the photo-cathode of an image dissector tube, to produce a stream of photoelectrons which is focused and deflected over an aperture, so that electrons from a small area of the photo-cathode pass through this aperture, and through an electron multiplier tube, to a collector electrode. The output signal is combined with reference output data from one or both of the horizontal and vertical deflection systems to generate an error signal representative of the angular position of the vehicle relative to the light source. The error signal may be used to maintain one axis of the vehicle in a desired attitude relative to a fixed light source, or may be fed to servomotors which position gimbals to point the optical axis of a tracker to a light source. -