Conical Scanning System for Pioneer Jupiter Spacecraft

The concept, operation, and predicted performance of an RF tracking control system used to point the Pioneer F/G spacecraft at the Earth is described. This system employs a modified conical scanning technique called Conscan. The signal processor, the most interesting unit of the system, is described in detail to show that it approximates a maximum likelihood estimator. The dynamic behavior of the spacecraft and the stability analysis of the system are presented, demonstrating that the system performance is basically determined by the open-loop phase and amplitude errors introduced by the antenna, receiver, and signal processor. A detailed error budget shows that the phase and amplitude errors are small. Finally, closed-loop simulation and test data are presented to verify the error budget.