This paper has presented the preliminary definition of the Drag-Free and Attitude Control System (DFACS) for the GOCE mission, as performed during the assessment study aimed at the selection of the candidate missions for the ESA Earth Explorer Programme. The major achievement is the demonstration of the feasibility of a DFACS concept fulfilling the challenging mission requirements while keeping system cost and complexity within reasonable limits. This has been made possible first by a thorough derivation of DFACS requirements from scientific objectives and second by the maximum use of validated actuation and sensing hardware. A specific DFACS design has been proposed to best address the characteristics of each mission concept, with the objective to match the DFACS performance to the expected sensitivity of the considered instrument. The resulting systems differ in performances, as they will differ in cost and complexity, but this will be further traded-off with the scientific achievements. The major open point is the applicability of reaction wheels, a quite appealing altemative to the proposed thruster-based attitude control: additional analysis and experimental work is necessary to assess the impact of frequency conversion of reaction wheel disturbances in the gradiometer measurement bandwidth.


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    Title :

    Drag-free & attitude control system for the gravity explorer mission


    Additional title:

    Schwingungsfreies Positionierungsregelsystem für die Gravitations-Forschungsmission im Weltraum


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    1997


    Size :

    7 Seiten, 11 Bilder, 4 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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