Hughes Aircraft Company

Mike W Tolmasoff

John F Yocum, Jr

Jeffrey J Gold

Steven R Zammit

David L Koza

Thomas D Faber

A system for testing an embedded control processor for a spacecraft comprises an Emulated Spacecraft Control Processor (24) which contains the embedded processor (26), a simulation engine (12), and a host computer (14). The Emulated Spacecraft Control Processor (24), executing embedded application software, provides an emulated input/output interface for the embedded processor (26) to communicate simulated sensor data, command data, actuator command data, and telemetry data to the simulation engine (12) and the host computer (14). The Emulated Spacecraft Control Processor (24) processes the simulated sensor data and the command data to form the actuator command data and the telemetry data. The simulation engine (12) processes the actuator command data from the Emulated Spacecraft Control Processor (24) to simulate the system dynamics of the spacecraft in real-time, and to thereby produce the simulated sensor data. The host computer (14) provides the command data and receives the telemetry data from the Emulated Spacecraft Control Processor (24).

Interface emulation system and method for applications utilizing

A method of sun search and acquisition is disclosed for a spacecraft (18) which is stabilized in three axes. The method utilizes three axes gyro rate and integrated rate sensing together with three simple slit type sensors (10, 20, 30, 40). The method starts from an arbitrary attitude and from body rates up to the limits of the gyro rate sensors and is comprised of a rate nulling step followed by two consecutive simple search procedures. One search procedure is about the pitch axis until alignment of the sun with the roll/pitch plane and the other search procedure is about the yaw axis until alignment of the sun with the roll axis. The sun acquisition culminates in pointing the roll axis of the spacecraft (18) toward the sun. By using slit type sun sensors (10, 20, 30, 40) versus a wide field of view sensor it is easier to find a mounting location on a spacecraft (18) which is free from spurious reflections off other parts of the spacecraft.

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Whittier, CA, United States of America

Mike W Tolmasoff