Attitude and Spin Period of Space Debris Envisat Measured by Satellite Laser Ranging

The Environmental Satellite (Envisat) mission was finished on April 8, 2012, and since that time, the attitude of the satellite has undergone significant changes. During the International Laser Ranging Service campaign, the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) stations have performed the range measurements...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 52; no. 12; pp. 7651 - 7657
Main Authors:	Kucharski, Daniel, Kirchner, Georg, Koidl, Franz, Cunbo Fan, Carman, Randall, Moore, Christopher, Dmytrotsa, Andriy, Ploner, Martin, Bianco, Giuseppe, Medvedskij, Mikhailo, Makeyev, Andriy, Appleby, Graham, Suzuki, Michihiro, Torre, Jean-Marie, Zhang Zhongping, Grunwaldt, Ludwig, Qu Feng
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	New York IEEE 01-12-2014 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Subjects:	Earth Earth Sciences Envisat Extraterrestrial measurements Inertial Laser beams Mathematical analysis Measurement by laser beam Orbitals Panels Retroreflectors Satellite laser ranging satellite laser ranging (SLR) satellite spin Satellites Sciences of the Universe space debris Space vehicles Vectors Vectors (mathematics) Envisat space debris satellite laser ranging (SLR) satellite spin
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Summary:	The Environmental Satellite (Envisat) mission was finished on April 8, 2012, and since that time, the attitude of the satellite has undergone significant changes. During the International Laser Ranging Service campaign, the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) stations have performed the range measurements to the satellite that allowed determination of the attitude and the spin period of Envisat during seven months of 2013. The spin axis of the satellite is stable within the radial coordinate system (RCS; fixed with the orbit) and is pointing in the direction opposite to the normal vector of the orbital plane in such a way that the spin axis makes an angle of 61.86° with the nadir vector and 90.69° with the along-track vector. The offset between the symmetry axis of the retroreflector panel and the spin axis of the satellite is 2.52 m and causes the meter-scale oscillations of the range measurements between the ground SLR system and the satellite during a pass. Envisat rotates in the counterclockwise (CCW) direction, with an inertial period of 134.74 s (September 25, 2013), and the spin period increases by 36.7 ms/day.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0196-2892 1558-0644
DOI:	10.1109/TGRS.2014.2316138