Attitude ground support system for the solar maximum mission spacecraft

The SMM attitude ground support system (AGSS) supports the acquisition of spacecraft roll attitude reference, performs the in-flight calibration of the attitude sensor complement, supports onboard control autonomy via onboard computer data base updates, and monitors onboard computer (OBC) performance. Initial roll attitude acquisition is accomplished by obtaining a coarse 3 axis attitude estimate from magnetometer and Sun sensor data and subsequently refining it by processing data from the fixed head star trackers. In-flight calibration of the attitude sensor complement is achieved by processing data from a series of slew maneuvers designed to maximize the observability and accuracy of the appropriate alignments and biases. To ensure autonomy of spacecraft operation, the AGSS selects guide stars and computes sensor occultation information for uplink to the OBC. The onboard attitude control performance is monitored on the ground through periodic attitude determination and processing of OBC data in downlink telemetry. In general, the control performance has met mission requirements. However, software and hardware problems have resulted in sporadic attitude reference losses.