This paper presents work conducted in preparation for a suborbital test flight to test an inertial measurement unit’s (IMU’s) ability to serve as a position determination mechanism in a GPS-denied environment. Because the IMU could potentially be used at several points during flight, it is not guaranteed that a GPS fix can be used to reset the IMU after the stresses of launch. Due to this, the specific goal of this work is to characterize whether a rocket launch disrupts the IMU-based position knowledge to the extent that it is unusable. This paper discusses preparations for a sub-orbital launch mission to this end. It include a description of the hardware and software used. A discussion of the data logging mechanism and the onboard and post-flight processing which is required to compare the GPS fixes and IMU-generated positions is also presented. Finally, the utility of an IMU capable of maintaining position awareness during launch is discussed.


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    Title :

    A suborbital IMU test mission


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Sensors and Systems for Space Applications VIII ; 2015 ; Baltimore,Maryland,United States


    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2015-05-22





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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