Space Integrated GPS/INS (SIGI) is a
strapdown Inertial Navigation Unit (INU) developed and built by
Honeywell International
Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance m ...
to control and stabilize
spacecraft
A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...
during flight.
SIGI has integrated
global positioning and inertial
navigation technology to provide three
navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...
solutions : ''Pure inertial,
GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...
-only and blended GPS/INS''.
Current and Future Usage
SIGI have been employed on the
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...
, the Japanese
H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) the
Boeing X-37 and
X-40.
SIGI is also proposed as the primary navigation system for
Orion, which is scheduled to replace the
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program ...
.
See also
*
Air navigation
*
Spherical trigonometry
Spherical trigonometry is the branch of spherical geometry that deals with the metrical relationships between the sides and angles of spherical triangles, traditionally expressed using trigonometric functions. On the sphere, geodesics are grea ...
*
Miniature Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU)
References
External links
Relative Navigation and Attitude Determination Near the International Space Station
Avionics
Radio navigation
Navigational equipment
Spacecraft communication
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