12.07.2015 Views

GP-B Post-Flight Analysis—Final Report - Gravity Probe B - Stanford ...

GP-B Post-Flight Analysis—Final Report - Gravity Probe B - Stanford ...

GP-B Post-Flight Analysis—Final Report - Gravity Probe B - Stanford ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
  • No tags were found...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

During the GSV portion of each orbit, the telescope remained locked on the guide star, with the spacecraft'smicro thrusters adjusting the telescope's pointing for the aberration of the guide star's light. This introduced avery distinct, half-sine wave pattern into the telescope orientation. This sinusoidal motion was also detected bythe gyro pickup loops that are located in the gyro housings, along the main axis of the spacecraft and telescope.Thus, this very characteristic pattern, generated by the telescope and thrusters, appeared as a calibration signalin the SQUID Readout Electronics (SRE) data for each gyro.14.1.5.4 The Annual Aberration SignalThe annual aberration of the guide star's light works the same way as the orbital aberration signal, but it takes anentire year to generate one complete sine wave.Figure 14-13. <strong>GP</strong>-B's annual aberration of light from the Guide Star, IM PegasiUsing the spacecraft's <strong>GP</strong>S system, we can determine the orbital velocity of the spacecraft to an accuracy ofbetter than one part in 100,000 (0.00001). Likewise, using Earth ephemeris data from the Jet Propulsion Lab inPasadena, CA, we can determine Earth's orbital velocity to equal or better accuracy. We then used thesevelocities to calculate the orbital and annual aberration values with extremely high precision, and in turn, weused these very precise aberration values to calibrate each of the gyro pointing signals. It is interesting to notethat the amplitude of the sine wave generated by the annual aberration is four times as large as the orbitalaberration amplitude, with peaks occurring in September and March. Because we launched <strong>GP</strong>-B in April andstarted collecting science data in September, the effect of the annual calibration signal did not become apparentin the data until February-March 2005, six to seven months into the science phase of the mission. Thus, fromMarch 2005 - August 2005, both the annual and orbital aberration signals were used in the ongoing analysis ofthe science data.<strong>Gravity</strong> <strong>Probe</strong> B — <strong>Post</strong> <strong>Flight</strong> Analysis • Final <strong>Report</strong> March 2007 413

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!