Innovation: The Right Attitude
September 1, 2011 By: Peter J. Buist, Sandra Verhagen, Tatsuaki Hashimoto, Shujiro Sawai, Shin-Ichiro Sakai, Nobutaka Bando, Shigehito Shimizu GPS WorldExperimenting with GPS on Board High-Altitude Balloons
In this month’s column, we look at how a team of Dutch and Japanese researchers is using GPS to determine the attitude of a payload launched from a high-altitude balloon.
INNOVATION INSIGHTS by Richard Langley
 Richard Langley |
It is not widely recognized that relative or differential positioning using GNSS carrier-phase measurements is an interferometric technique. In interferometry, the difference in the phase of an electromagnetic wave at two locations is precisely measured as a function of time. The phase differences depend, amongst other factors, on the length and orientation of the baseline connecting the two locations. The classic demonstration of interferometry, showing that light could be interpreted as a wave phenomenon, was the 1803 double-slit experiment of the English polymath, Thomas Young. Many of us recreated the experiment in high school or university physics classes. A collimated beam of light is shone through two small holes or narrow slits in a barrier placed between the light source and a screen. Alternating light and dark bands are seen on the screen. The bands are called interference fringes and result from the waves emanating from the two slits constructively and destructively interfering with each other. The colors seen on the surface of an audio CD, the colors of soap film, and those of peacock feathers and the wings of the Morpho butterfly are all examples of interference.
Interference fringes also reveal information about the source of the waves. In 1920, the American Nobel-prize-winning physicist, Albert Michelson, used an interferometer attached to a large telescope to measure the diameter of the star Betelgeuse. Radio astronomers extended the concept to radio wavelengths, using two antennas connected to a receiver by cables or a microwave link. Such radio interferometers were used to study the structure of various radio sources including the sun. Using atomic frequency standards and magnetic tape recording, astronomers were able to sever the real-time links between the antennas, giving birth to very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) in 1967. The astronomers used VLBI to study extremely compact radio sources such as the enigmatic quasars. But geodesists realized that high resolution VLBI could also be used to determine — very precisely — the components of the baseline connecting the antennas, even if they were on separate continents.
That early work in geodetic VLBI led to the concept developed by Charles Counselman III and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s of recording the carrier phase of GPS signals with two separate receivers and then differencing the phases to create an observable from which the components of the baseline connecting the receivers’ antennas could be determined. This has become the standard high-precision GPS surveying technique. Later, others took the concept and applied it to short baselines on a moving platform allowing the attitude of the platform to be determined.
In this month’s column, we look at how a team of Dutch and Japanese researchers is using GPS to determine the attitude of a payload launched from a high-altitude balloon.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is developing a system to provide a high-quality, long duration microgravity environment using a capsule that can be released from a high-altitude balloon. Since 1981, an average of 100 million dollars is spent every year on microgravity research by space agencies in the United States, Europe, and Japan. There are many ways to achieve microgravity conditions such as (in order of experiment duration) drop towers, parabolic flights, balloon drops, sounding rockets, the Space Shuttle (unfortunately, no longer), recoverable satellites, and the International Space Station. The order of those options is also approximately the order of increasing experiment cost, with the exception of the balloon drop. Besides being cost-efficient, a balloon-based system has the advantage that no large acceleration is required before the experiment can be performed, which could be important for any delicate equipment that is carried aloft.
In this article, we will describe JAXA’s Balloon-based Operation Vehicle (BOV) and the experiments carried out in cooperation with Delft University of Technology (DUT) using GPS on the gondola of the balloon in 2008 (single baseline estimation) and 2009 (full attitude determination and relative positioning). The attitude calculated using observations from the onboard GPS receiver during the 2009 experiment is compared with that from sun and geomagnetic sensors as well as that provided by the GPS receiver itself.
Nowadays, GNSS is used for absolute and relative positioning of aircraft and spacecraft as well as determination of their attitude. What these applications have in common is that, in general, the orientation of the platform is changing relatively slowly and, to a large extent, predictably. Here, we will discuss a balloon-based application where the orientation of the platform, at times, varies very dynamically and unpredictably.
Balloon Experiments
Scientific balloons have been launched in Japan by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), now a division of JAXA, since 1965, and it holds the world record for the highest altitude reached by a balloon — 53 kilometers. Recently, balloon launches have taken place from the Multipurpose Aviation Park (MAP) in Taiki on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The balloons are launched using a so-called sliding launcher. The sliding launcher and the hanger at MAP are shown in FIGURE 1.
Figure 1. Takeoff of the Balloon-based Operation Vehicle (BOV) 2009 experiment. The BOV and the gondola hanging from the sliding launcher can be seen to the left, while the balloon can be seen in front of the hanger on the right.
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