Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Ellsworth, J. D..
The present work outlines eight candidate navigation systems for autonomous target relative navigation near a comet, asteroid, or planet. An analytic model is developed for each system, showing how the solution of the relative state vector is obtained from measurement data.
The study of comets is of important scientific value as part of the exploration of the solar system. This paper proposes a method, called 'stationary target identification,' to detect the nucleus within the coma. The method makes use of the fact that the coma is ever expanding about the nucleus. Therefore, when a radar beam is used for detection, the coma particles will produce a return signal that is Doppler shifted. The effects of the spatial extent of the coma and Doppler bandwidth of the coma returns upon the required data processing are considered. Also different methods of implementation are considered.-
Saturn 5 launch vehicle navigation system design, discussing configurations, implementation schemes, system tradeoffs and performance