Bibcode
Gandilo, N. N.; Ade, P. A. R.; Amiri, M.; Angilè, F. E.; Benton, S. J.; Bock, J. J.; Bond, J. R.; Bryan, S. A.; Chiang, H. C.; Contaldi, C. R.; Crill, B. P.; Devlin, M. J.; Dober, B.; Doré, O. P.; Farhang, M.; Filippini, J. P.; Fissel, L. M.; Fraisse, A. A.; Fukui, Y.; Galitzki, N.; Gambrel, A. E.; Golwala, S.; Gudmundsson, J. E.; Halpern, M.; Hasselfield, M.; Hilton, G. C.; Holmes, W. A.; Hristov, V. V.; Irwin, K. D.; Jones, W. C.; Kermish, Z. D.; Klein, J.; Korotkov, A. L.; Kuo, C. L.; MacTavish, C. J.; Mason, P. V.; Matthews, T. G.; Megerian, K. G.; Moncelsi, L.; Morford, T. A.; Mroczkowski, T. K.; Nagy, J. M.; Netterfield, C. B.; Novak, G.; Nutter, D.; O'Brient, R.; Pascale, E.; Poidevin, F.; Rahlin, A. S.; Reintsema, C. D.; Ruhl, J. E.; Runyan, M. C.; Savini, G.; Scott, D.; Shariff, J. A.; Soler, J. D.; Thomas, N. E.; Trangsrud, A.; Truch, M. D.; Tucker, C. E.; Tucker, G. S.; Tucker, R. S.; Turner, A. D.; Ward-Thompson, D.; Weber, A. C.; Wiebe, D. V.; Young, E. Y.
Bibliographical reference
Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 9145, id. 91452U 16 pp. (2014).
Advertised on:
7
2014
Citations
11
Refereed citations
5
Description
An attitude determination system for balloon-borne experiments is
presented. The system provides pointing information in azimuth and
elevation for instruments flying on stratospheric balloons over
Antarctica. In-flight attitude is given by the real-time combination of
readings from star cameras, a magnetometer, sun sensors, GPS,
gyroscopes, tilt sensors and an elevation encoder. Post-flight attitude
reconstruction is determined from star camera solutions, interpolated by
the gyroscopes using an extended Kalman Filter. The multi-sensor system
was employed by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope
for Polarimetry (BLASTPol), an experiment that measures polarized
thermal emission from interstellar dust clouds. A similar system was
designed for the upcoming flight of Spider, a Cosmic Microwave
Background polarization experiment. The pointing requirements for these
experiments are discussed, as well as the challenges in designing
attitude reconstruction systems for high altitude balloon flights. In
the 2010 and 2012 BLASTPol flights from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, the
system demonstrated an accuracy of < 5' rms in-flight, and < 5"
rms post-flight.