Location
University of Utah
Start Date
6-11-1997 1:15 PM
Description
Active areas of research often create the need for improved technology to make observations in a way that has not previously been utilized. Such is the case with middle atmospheric research. This 60 to 120 km region of the atmosphere is too low to be directly probed by satellites and too high to be probed by research airplanes or high altitude balloons. Sounding rockets are the only vehicle that can carry instruments for in situ measurements. Up until now only a few methods have been available to track the location of a sounding rocket - radar skin tracking, radio beacon tracking, and inertial reference platform tracking. In this paper a joint NASA - Utah State University (USU)/Space Dynamics Lab (SDL) project to develop a Global Positioning System (GPS) based solution for tracking small sounding rockets ( lOD DARTs to be specific) in the middle atmosphere is presented. The size of the DART casing and the g-force created by the booster present various obstacles in the implementation of a GPS receiver. Rockwell's Jupiter GPS receiver designer's kit has shown that it is capable of overcoming these obstacles. Research is continuing in the area of antenna development, but initial test results reveal the Toko DAK series dielectric patch antenna as a workable solution. Finally, plans for the hardware system integration have been made.
Included in
GPS Tracking for Small Sounding Rockets
University of Utah
Active areas of research often create the need for improved technology to make observations in a way that has not previously been utilized. Such is the case with middle atmospheric research. This 60 to 120 km region of the atmosphere is too low to be directly probed by satellites and too high to be probed by research airplanes or high altitude balloons. Sounding rockets are the only vehicle that can carry instruments for in situ measurements. Up until now only a few methods have been available to track the location of a sounding rocket - radar skin tracking, radio beacon tracking, and inertial reference platform tracking. In this paper a joint NASA - Utah State University (USU)/Space Dynamics Lab (SDL) project to develop a Global Positioning System (GPS) based solution for tracking small sounding rockets ( lOD DARTs to be specific) in the middle atmosphere is presented. The size of the DART casing and the g-force created by the booster present various obstacles in the implementation of a GPS receiver. Rockwell's Jupiter GPS receiver designer's kit has shown that it is capable of overcoming these obstacles. Research is continuing in the area of antenna development, but initial test results reveal the Toko DAK series dielectric patch antenna as a workable solution. Finally, plans for the hardware system integration have been made.