Patent ID: 7149610

Claim:
A method of estimating a momentum to be removed from a spacecraft: generating a plurality of spacecraft momentum measurements; fitting the plurality of spacecraft momentum measurements to a parametric model of a spacecraft momentum profile having a time period of t p ; determining the momentum of the spacecraft from the parametric model; and generating an estimate of the momentum to be removed from the spacecraft at least in part from the determined momentum of the spacecraft; wherein the generating a plurality of spacecraft momentum measurements comprises measuring the spacecraft angular rate; measuring an angular rate of a momentum storage device disposed in the satellite; and computing the momentum of the spacecraft at least in part from the spacecraft angular rate, the momentum storage device angular rate, and an inertia of the spacecraft and an inertia of the momentum storage device; and wherein the period spacecraft momentum profile comprises a plurality of segments, each segment modeled by a set of basis functions selected from the group comprising a 3 rd order polynomial, and each segment is an hour in duration.