Abstract
A general procedure to determine accurately the true relationship between the commanded and the actual force output of a set of thrusters is presented. This relationship is determined from data generated from a spacecraft while it is on orbit. On orbit thruster calibration measures the true outputs of the thrusters in the actual space environment in which they operate. The feasibility of the calibration technique is verified by a digital simulation of the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) spacecraft dynamics. GP-B is an Earth orbiting experiment which will test several aspects of general relativity. A set of 18 proportional thrusters generates forces and moments for three degree of freedom attitude and three degree of freedom drag free translation control of the GP-B spacecraft. A total of 108 parameters are needed to characterize the magnitude and direction of both the force and moment outputs of the 18 thrusters. The ability to calibrate these parameters to an accuracy of better than 1%is demonstrated.
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