METHOD FOR DETECTION OF ANGULAR ORIENTATION OF SPACECRAFT BY SIGNAL OF RADIO NAVIGATION ORIENTATOR Russian patent published in 2009 - IPC G01C21/12 

FIELD: physics, measurement.

SUBSTANCE: invention is related to space radio navigation and may be used in measurement facilities for detection of spacecraft orientation, intended for correction of orientation parametres in board inertial navigation system (INS). As radio navigation orientator (RNO), ground and orbital radiation sources may be used. Substance of invention consists in the fact that according to data on position of axes of associated and orbital system of coordinates stored in inertial navigation system, orientation of associated axes of spacecraft is carried out parallel to axes of orbital system of coordinates, and such orientation of axes is retained in a certain interval of flight, during which signal of single RNO is received to antennas of spacecraft in amount of not more than three, installed so that they do not lie on the same straight line. Serially they measure three and more values of phase difference of bearing frequency of signal received by pairs of antennas, systematic error is detected in inertial orientation of spacecraft by values of signal bearing frequency phase difference.

EFFECT: higher reliability of spacecraft angular orientation detection due to reduction of RNO number and possibility to detect orientation of spacecraft by measured values of signal phase difference only in one RNO.

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