Determining the rotational motion of the Bion M-1 satellite with the GRAVITON instrument

Abstract

Actual controlled rotational motion of the Bion M-1 satellite is reconstructed for the modes of the orbital and single-axis solar orientation. The reconstruction was performed using data of onboard measurements of the vectors of angular velocity and the Earth’s magnetic field (EMF) strength. The reconstruction procedure is based on the kinematic equations of the rotational motion of a solid body. In the framework of this procedure, measurement data for two types collected at a certain time interval are processed jointly. Measurements of angular velocity are interpolated by piecewise–linear functions, which are substituted in the kinematic differential equations for quaternion giving the transition from the satellite instrument coordinate system to the inertial (the second geoequatorial) coordinate system. Thus the obtained equations represent the kinematic model of the satellite rotational motion. The solution to these equations approximating the actual motion is derived from the condition of the best (in the sense of the least-square method) matching measurement data of the EMF strength vector with the calculated values. The described procedure allows us to reconstruct the actual rotational satellite motion using one solution to kinematic equations over time intervals with durations of more than 5 h. Found reconstructions were used to calculate the residual microaccelerations.