The program required the design and construction of an Advanced Handheld Space Sextant which would be useable in a wide variety of manned space vehicles and mission configurations. The basic use of the Sextant as a navigational instrument is to provide basic data which permits solution of the general orbital navigation and rendezvous problems of manned space vehicles. The capability of the Sextant to perform this function was successfully demonstrated in navigation experiments conducted in the Gemini GT-6 and GT-7 missions. The equipment construction effort is a natural extension of previous conceptual work directed toward the development of space navigation concepts of data acquisition which require no support from automatic subsystems and would not be dependent on any power source but man. Significant efforts were made to improve the characteristics of the existing AF 69999 Space Sextant in the general areas of accuracy, weight, readout capability, and ease of operation. Experience with the AF 69999 Sextant in the D-9 navigation experiment in the Gemini GT-4 mission provided much of the basic direction for these efforts. Significant accomplishments in the instrument design were a weight reduction of 2.4 pounds to 5.75 pounds and significant improvement accuracy. The bounded error of the qualified instruments ranged from 8 arc seconds to 18 arc seconds total. (Author)
Advanced Experimental Space Navigation Instrumentation
1966
70 pages
Report
Keine Angabe
Englisch
Instrumentation for space navigation
Engineering Index Backfile | 1963
|NTRS | 1967
Instrumentation for navigation
Engineering Index Backfile | 1960
|