Using distributed magnetometry in navigation of heavy launchers and space vehicles

¹ SYSNAV 57 Rue de Montigny, Vernon 27200, France
² CNES Toulouse, CNES DCT/SI/GS 18 Av. Edouard Belin, Toulouse 31401, France
³ MINES ParisTech, Centre Automatique et Systèmes 60 bd. Saint-Michel, Paris 75272, France

Abstract

Recently, a new technique (magneto-inertial navigation, MINAV) has emerged to address the general problem of reconstructing the inertial velocity of a rigid body moving in a magnetically disturbed region. The contribution of this paper is to apply the developed method, in a prospective spirit, to a case of space navigation in view of estimating the performance improvement that could be obtained using state-of-theart magnetometer technology onboard heavy launchers and other space vehicles. The main underlying idea of the approach is to estimate the inertial velocity by readings of the magnetic field at spatially distributed (known) locations on the rigid body. Mathematically, through a chainrule differentiation involving variables commonly appearing in classic inertial navigation, an estimate of this velocity can be obtained. This paper presents the potential of this method in the field of navigation of heavy launchers passing through particular regions of the Earth magnetosphere as considered, e. g., for upcoming Galileo missions. Numerical results based on the specifications of candidate embedded magnetic sensors stress the relevance of the approach. The presented methodology is patent pending and has been partially funded by CNES.