Citation
Abstract
As developing national and international space ventures, which seek to employ NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) for tracking and data acquisition, evolve, it is essential for navigation and tracking system analysts to evaluate the operational capability of Deep Space Station antennas. ‘To commission the DSN for use in tracking a highly eccentric Earth orbiter could quite possibly yield the greatest challenges in terms of slewing capability; certainly more so than with a deep-space probe. This article focuses on the determination of the maximum slew rates needed to track a specific high Earth orbiter, namely, the Japanese MUSES-B spacecraft of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry Space Observatory Program. The results suggest that DSN 34-m antennas are capable of meeting the slew rate requirements for the nominal MUSES-B orbital geometries currently being considered.
Details
- Volume
- 42-100
- Published
- February 15, 1990
- Pages
- 13–20
- File Size
- 209.5 KB