1887. In Flight Demonstration of Mass Properties Identification and Jet Plume Interaction on the Aero Assist Flight Experiment
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Paper
Abstract
Algorithms for in-flight demonstration of spacecraft mass, center of mass, and inertia matrix have been developed. These algorithms are intended to provide the capability to autonomously measure mass properties as they change in-flight due to consumable expenditure, payload deployment and retrieval, and docking. Prior to serious consideration of these algorithms for actual spacecraft applications, it is highly desirable to test their performance in an actual flight environment. The mass properties estimator is a second order, nonlinear filter which resembles an extended Kalman filter. It contains a model for the dynamics of a rigid spacecraft with the mass properties as parameters. When jets are fired, that model is used with the current estimate of mass properties to predict the output of rate gyros and accelerometers on the spacecraft, and that prediction is compared to actual measured values. The filter operates on this comparison to revise its estimate of spacecraft mass properties. Simulation results indicate that the vehicle inertia matrix, center of mass, and mass can be determined by a sequence of eleven individual jet firings. Starting with arbitrary numerical values for each parameter, the mass properties can be determined to better than 1%.
