Guidance and Control of Reentry and Aerospace Vehicles

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a review of guidance and control of aerospace vehicles as related to computer technology. It presents some of the background material necessary to develop mechanization equations and to indicate how these equations affect the speed and storage requirements of an on-board computer. The computer requirements are generated in two areas: (1) the storage of all the old data and (2) the implementation of a differential correct on orbit- determination procedure that requires processing all the old data several times. It is possible to eliminate these requirements by using the techniques of optimum linear estimation. Recognition of the promise of reduced computer requirements has led to extensive study of linear techniques. Much of the work that has been done is related to lunar missions, with some related to near-earth missions. The chapter highlights a few of the computation requirements for on-board orbit determination and suggests a slightly different formulation designed to improve the mechanization.