GP-B Post-Flight AnalysisÃ¢Â€Â”Final Report - Gravity Probe B - Stanford ...

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15.4 The Two Surprises and Their Impact On TheExperimentFrancis Everitt is fond of telling the story that in the months leading up to the GP-B launch, several people whohad deep experience with other space missions told him that all the things he knew were likely to go wrongwould work perfectly, but other things that couldn't possibly cause any difficulty would keep the team up atnight.These turned out to be prophetic words. Our science team made two significant discoveries about the scienceinstrument that have lengthened the data analysis process:1. Shortly after the gyros were spun up in August 2004, we discovered that the polhode motion of the gyrorotors, which was expected to exhibit a constant pattern throughout the experimental period, waschanging over time, significantly complicating the calibration of the gyroscope readout angles.Figure 15-4. A slide from the GP-B plenary talk that Francis Everitt will deliver at the APS meeting on April 14,2007. This slide shows the changing polhode paths of gyros #1 and #4 and summarizes the issues of polhode ratevariations in the gyros.2. During the post-experiment instrument calibration testing in August-September 2005, the spin axes ofthe gyroscopes were found to be affected by certain class of small classical torques, known as“misalignment torques,” whose effects must be rigorously separated from the relativity measurements.428 March 2007 Chapter 15 — Preliminary Results
Figure 15-5. A slide from the GP-B plenary talk that Francis Everitt will deliver at the APS meeting on April 14,2007. This slide shows the misalignment torques discovered during a series of instrument calibration testsperformed during the last six weeks of the mission, prior to depletion of helium in the dewar.However, the team was prepared for such an eventuality. In fact, the GP-B experiment was carefully designed toenable us to discover such unexpected sources of error. As Francis Everitt notes: “When trying to do anexperiment that goes seven orders of magnitude beyond where anyone has gone before, some extraordinaryplanning is necessary. First, you design the experiment to make all the errors as close to zero as possible. Next,you average everything you can—for example, you roll the spacecraft throughout the experiment. Finally, youpurposely look for things that were not expected.”During one of many NASA program reviews prior to launch, experienced investigators from other NASAmissions asked us what processes we had put in place to discover systematic sources of error that might crop upin the data. Our answer was that we would follow a principle set forth by the 18th century scientist, HenryCavendish—namely, if you are worried that something in an experiment might be a potential source of error,you take the step of deliberately exaggerating the error sources to determine how bad they can get. This processenables you to quantify the magnitude of the problem and determine a way to deal with it. (For a thoroughdiscussion of the “Cavendish” principle, see the 1977 paper by Francis Everitt entitled Gravitation, Relativity andPrecise Experimentation, which is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format on our GP-B Web site athttp://einstein.stanford.edu/content/sci_papers/papers/Everitt_Gravitation-Precise-Expt-1977.pdf.From mid-August through September 2005, after collecting 50 weeks of science data and before the liquidhelium was exhausted from the dewar, we followed Cavendish's principle by performing a barrage of calibrationtests on all parts of our science instrument. These tests, along with other tests that we performed throughout themission, enabled us to confirm that all of the known and expected sources of error—with one exception—were,in fact, negligible as expected. As William Bencze put it: “Without the extensive calibration tests, we would havebeen looking for a needle in a haystack; instead, we only had to look for a needle on the floor.”Specifically, these tests confirmed that six of the seven extrinsic “near zero” design specifications of theexperiment had been met or exceeded, and we were able to eliminate each of these factors as sources of error inthe final results. (For an explanation of GP-B’s seven near-zero specifications, see Section 3.1.1, GP-B’s SevenGravity Probe B — Post Flight Analysis • Final Report March 2007 429
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Post Flight Analysis — Final Repo
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Signatures & ApprovalsPrepared byPu
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Table of ContentsPreface . . . . .
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6.8 Sources and References . . . .
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11 Telescope Readout Subsystem (TRE
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14 Data Collection, Processing & An
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xiv March 2007 Table of Contents
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Figure 3-4. The GP-B dewar—one of
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Figure 8-5. The Seasons of GP-B . .
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Figure 11-20. Pointing angle differ
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Figure 14-9. In the Anomaly Room, t
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xxiv March 2007
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Table 13-3. GP-B payload magnetomet
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xxviiiMarch 2007
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2 March 2007 Chapter 1 — Executiv
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facility, it was necessary to recas
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spacetime around with them as they
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After years of work and the inventi
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axis of a gyroscope rotor changes i
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Figure 1-8. Clockwise, from top lef
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“management experiment.” This w
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Attitude-Control Gyroscopes. Two pa
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Any significant deviation from “g
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established, ranging from Level 1 (
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1.14 The Broader Legacy of GP-BAt l
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24 March 2007 Chapter 2 — Overvie
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Figure 2-1. GP-B Historical Time Li
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Applied Physics Laboratory, of the
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William Fairbank once remarked: “
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In Einstein’s view, space and tim
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y a mere 1.1 inches. You can see th
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Figure 2-10. Schematic diagram of t
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Figure 2-12. Final assembly of the
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Sun Shield. The sun shield is a lon
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2.1.8 The Broader Legacy of GP-BWhe
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2.3 Spacecraft SeparationThe Solar
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Flight Anomalies.) Furthermore, a d
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Table 2-2. Weekly summary of IOC ac
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2.4.3.2 Guide Star AcquisitionAbout
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A second mass trim operation had be
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On Friday, 2 July 2004, the spin ra
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Low temperature bakeout was first p
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2.5.1.3 Lockheed Martin Team Phase-
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Monthly Highlights of the GP-B Scie
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2.6.1 Overview of the Calibration P
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Weekly Highlights of the GP-B Final
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66 March 2007 Chapter 3 — Accompl
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It was in this pristine, near-zero
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Each quartz rotor is coated with a
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Figure 3-3. Functional diagram of a
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Based on data from the on-board tel
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Ideally, the telescope should have
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Figure 3-9. Schematic diagram of st
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used. The star trackers are essenti
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Result: By using the porous plug, w
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Solution: Create a tetrahedral lapp
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Constraint 2: The exhaust tube must
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Result: The on-orbit gyroscope spin
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spacecraft's subsystems for the dur
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Constraint 3: Keep the spacecraft p
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Technology Category Specific Implem
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96 March 2007 Chapter 4 — GP-B On
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Any significant deviation from “g
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packages, one for each Ping load an
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In addition to these software packa
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Table 4-6. Features & benefits of W
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This software added considerable ef
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It is said that “an experiment is
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Table 4-10. Significant Events/Sour
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Figure 4-5. Pictorial depiction of
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Figure 4-7. Eta-Average Error Assoc
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4.4.4.2 OD Using SLR DataFigure 4-9
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4.4.5 ConclusionsFigure 4-11. Compa
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Overall, the storage issues did not
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Table 4-11. ITF equipment listEQUIP
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124 March 2007 Chapter 5 — Managi
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5.2 Overview of GP-B Anomalies in O
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Figure 5-1. Anomaly Review Team Org
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5.3.3.1 Anomaly Investigation and R
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5.3.5 Anomaly Identification and Re
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5.4.3 Risk Management ApproachThe r
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Table 5-1. Summary of Open GP-B ris
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138 March 2007 Chapter 5 — Managi
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140 March 2007 Chapter 6 — The GP
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3. Payload Integration, Testing and
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Figure 6-1. Clockwise from top left
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MSFC conducted an in-house Phase A
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It is important to note that from t
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6.3.1 Incremental PrototypingThe pe
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alignment, and act as an accelerome
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Figure 6-9. The Lockheed Martin GP-
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Furthermore, a fourth electronic sy
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positive thermal connections betwee
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astrophysics/cosmology. Many of the
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Figure 6-10. MSFC Program Managers/
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As described in Chapter 2, the flig
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6.7 Some Observations on the Manage
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168 March 2007 Chapter 6 — The GP
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170 March 2007 Chapter 7 — Attitu
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7.1.2 Vehicle ATC ModesThere are es
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The output of the pressure transduc
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Figure 7-3. Science Telescope Compo
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Figure 7-5. Pitch and Yaw Pointing
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Figure 7-7. Magnitude of the roll r
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Changing the method by which the gy
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7.3.3 Drag-Free Control SystemFigur
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7.3.3.1 DFS - PerformanceThe GP-B d
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Figure 7-15. Mass flow effects of a
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7.5.2 Successful recovery from mult
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If the vehicle control system were
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accomplish this, the ARPs are mount
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7.5.6.1 South Atlantic AnomalyProto
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Figure 7-23. Effects on telescope p
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200 March 2007 Chapter 7 — Attitu
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202 March 2007 Chapter 8 — Other
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Figure 8-2. Block Diagram of CDH co
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8.1.1.4 WATCH DOG TIMERFigure 8-4.
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of eclipses each day (approximately
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Figure 8-8. GSS1 Temperature Trends
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Figure 8-10. Forward Dewar Vacuum S
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The Gravity Probe B spacecraft has
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Figure 8-13. Forward -X Thruster Te
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gaFigure 8-15. Aft -X Thruster Temp
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Because there are only two SQUID br
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Because the specifications for SRE
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8.3.2 Critical Mission RequirementT
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Figure 8-19 is a plot of the power
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Battery Performance Summary:Figure
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Figure 8-23. Solar Array Temperatur
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8.3.10 ConclusionThe electrical pow
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8.4.1 TDRSS OperationsFigure 8-28.
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Figure 8-30. Xpndr-A STDN (green),
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Figure 8-32. Plot of TDRS AGC vs Te
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The FSW also met its subsystem leve
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Appendix E, Flight Software Applica
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Table 8-4. SCRs Addressed in On-orb
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The software and macro changes resu
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Figure 8-38 below is an excerpt fro
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Figure 8-40. A-side CCCA Single Bit
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Figure 8-43. A-side CCCA Single Bit
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When single MBEs did not result in
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256 March 2007 Chapter 9 — Gyro S
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9.1 GSS Hardware DescriptionFigure
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significantly reduces and thus pres
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9.1.11 Clock synchronizationThe aft
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Figure 9-8. Block diagram of the LQ
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direction (transverse to the space
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9.2.2.2 Spin-up SuspensionDuring sp
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Figure 9-16. Predicted and measured
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Figure 9-18. The GSS passes rotor c
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Figure 9-20. Representative drag-fr
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Table 9-1. GSS Science Mission Mode
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Table 9-3. GSW application source l
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The Design and Testing of the Gravi
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282 March 2007 Chapter 10 — SQUID
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ate uncertainty). Although we have
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All of the GP-B electronics have be
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10.3 Pre-Launch Ground-Based TestsW
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Figure 10-6. AC Magnetic Shielding
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Figure 10-8. Temperature Error of S
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Figure 10-10. Quiescent SQUID Noise
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Analog control loops on the electro
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The science support applications ru
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Table 10-7. SSW application source
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308 March 2007 Chapter 11 — Teles
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Figure 11-1. Block diagram of TRE a
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Additionally, the warm electronics
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Figure 11-3. CLL switch states duri
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Table 11-3. Dates and UTC times whe
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Figure 11-7. Low Gamma Angle Data S
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s N+w i= sign+w i++−+−w i−w i
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expression, which otherwise on a po
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Figure 11-14. Y axis, B side RMS po
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Figure 11-17. X axis, B side curren
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Figure 11-20. Pointing angle differ
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Figure 11-24. Scaled summed current
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Figure 11-26 through Figure 11-29 s
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334 March 2007 Chapter 12 — Cryog
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12.2 Temperature / pressure control
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control the space vehicle without t
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Figure 12-3. Helium flow rate predi
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helium at 1.8 K. It does not appear
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Figure 12-6. Flow meter and ATC flo
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were generally within a day or so o
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shields) and subsequent instability
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350 March 2007 Chapter 12 — Cryog
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352 March 2007 Chapter 13 — Other
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Figure 13-2. ECU-operated heaters i
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13.1.3.1 Vatterfly Valve Operations
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13.1.3.7 Payload MagnetometersThe E
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Figure 13-11. ECU performance durin
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As we entered the second month of o
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During the last month of IOC, prepa
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Figure 13-19. ECU heater activity d
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Table 13-1. Proton monitor channel
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Figure 13-21. Proton Monitor data i
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In November, 2004 there was a large
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Figure 13-28 shows a correlation th
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13.3.1 About the MagnetometersFigur
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Page 410 and 411: Figure 13-37. Master Antenna Switch
Page 412 and 413: Figure 13-39. Time difference betwe
Page 414 and 415: 13.4.6 On-Orbit ResultsThe GPS comp
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Page 418 and 419: E. G. Lightsey, C. E. Cohen, B. W.
Page 420 and 421: Figure 13-45. A Bottom View of the
Page 422 and 423: Figure 13-48. The GMA configuration
Page 424 and 425: Table 13-10. Summary for Helium Gas
Page 426 and 427: 398 March 2007 Chapter 14 — Data
Page 428 and 429: a relatively slow data rate, so we
Page 430 and 431: Figure 14-4. NASA ground stations a
Page 432 and 433: electronic components to recover fr
Page 434 and 435: By a process of elimination, the GP
Page 436 and 437: A special room in the GP-B Mission
Page 438 and 439: Starting on 3 December 1725, Bradle
Page 440 and 441: seemed that aberration of starlight
Page 442 and 443: 14.1.6 Telescope Dither—Correlati
Page 444 and 445: 14.1.6.3 The Telescope Dither Patte
Page 446 and 447: amplifications. Thus, in addition t
Page 448 and 449: 14.2.2 Independent Data Analysis Te
Page 450 and 451: monthly time scales. Though only sh
Page 452 and 453: 424 March 2007 Chapter 15 — Preli
Page 454 and 455: Figure 15-2. A diagram of the GP-B
Page 458 and 459: Near Zeroes.) The exception that we
Page 460 and 461: Figure 15-8. A slide from the GP-B
Page 462 and 463: Figure 15-9. A poster on the effect
Page 464 and 465: electrostatic patches, located at o
Page 466 and 467: Last summer (2006), Mac Keiser devi
Page 468 and 469: 440 March 2007 Chapter 15 — Preli
Page 470 and 471: 442 March 2007 Chapter 16 — Lesso
Page 472 and 473: 16.1.1.3 Flight science downlink da
Page 474 and 475: Description of the GP-B experience:
Page 476 and 477: Lessons:1. Perform all tests with a
Page 480 and 481: Figure 16-1. Six interacting transl
Page 482 and 483: 16.1.3.2 Training and certification
Page 486 and 487: Below is an edited summary of six a
Page 488 and 489: 460 March 2007 Chapter 16 — Lesso
Page 490 and 491: 462 March 2007 Appendix A — Gravi
Page 492 and 493: Apogee altitude659.1 km (409.6 mile
Page 494 and 495: 466 March 2007 Chapter B — Spacec
Page 496 and 497: Gravity Probe B — Post Flight Ana
Page 498 and 499: 470 March 2007 Appendix C — Weekl
Page 500 and 501: 16 April 2004—Vehicle is Prepared
Page 502 and 503: The electrical power system is full
Page 504 and 505: 4 JUNE 2004—MISSION UPDATE: DAY 4
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SQUIDs to detect their rotation spe
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17 JULY 2004—MISSION UPDATE: DAY
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indicate that we have reduced the t
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C.4 Science Mission Phase: 8/27/04
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• GP-B also has an independent da
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free suspension parameters to de-tu
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We have received inquiries about a
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One of the effects of geomagnetic s
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egan transmitting, one-by-one, stat
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28 JANUARY 2005—GRAVITY PROBE B M
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magnetic pole. This event triggered
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8 APRIL 2005—GRAVITY PROBE B MISS
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On Tuesday afternoon (19-April), GP
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Norway or through the NASA space ne
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Dewar Temperature: 1.82 kelvin, hol
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visitors on a tour of the GP-B faci
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test, we are planning on running fi
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contractor at the Goddard Space Fli
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On Wednesday, we visited the star H
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Gyro Suspension System (GSS): All 4
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The helium in the dewar has now sur
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the all the spacecraft status data.
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522 March 2007 Appendix D — Summa
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Figure D-2 below shows the distribu
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DateSeveritySubtypeTitle Descriptio
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DateSeverity24 26-Apr-04 Obs F Nois
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DateSeverity40 11-May-04 Obs T Dwel
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DateSeverity68 16-Jun-04 Medium Dec
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DateSeverity84 13-Jul-04 Obs F Slig
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DateSeverity116 26-Sep-04 Obs F SG3
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DateSeverity132 20-Dec-04 Obs F Unc
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DateSeverity149 5-Mar-05 Obs T Few
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DateSeverity169 04-Jun-05 Obs F MBE
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DateSeverity191 04-Oct-05 Obs A GSS
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550 March 2007 Appendix E — Fligh
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ReqIDLevel 1CSCDMP DataMgmtProcessi
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ReqIDLevel 1CSCLevel2 CSC Level 3 C
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Page 586 and 587:
Page 588 and 589:
ReqIDLevel 1CSCSRM Solid StateRecor
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ReqIDLevel 1CSCSRP SafemodeResponse
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ReqIDLevel 1CSCGUP GSS Processing g
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570 March 2007 Appendix F — Acron
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AcronymDefinitionAcronymDefinitionB
Page 602 and 603:
AcronymDefinitionAcronymDefinitionD
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AcronymDefinitionAcronymDefinitionF
Page 606 and 607:
AcronymDefinitionIRUInertial Refere
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AcronymDefinitionAcronymDefinitionM
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AcronymPMPMAPMCPMEPMETPMSPMSUPNPoPO
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AcronymSCMOSCMTSCNSCPASCPMSCRSCSASC
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AcronymDefinitionAcronymDefinitionT
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588 March 2007 Appendix F — Acron
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