Falcon Gold - Orbit Determination Above the GPS Constellation

Students at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) and the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) are designing, building, and testing a spacecraft scheduled to fly on a Lockheed Martin Atlas/Centaur in October 1997. The mission objective is to characterize the Global Positioning System (GPS) signal for use in orbit determination above the GPS constellation. Falcon Gold will remain on the spent Centaur in a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) relaying GPS signal measurements for approximately two weeks until the on-board batteries expire. These measurements will characterize the signal to noise ratio and may yield an orbit solution during ground post-processing of the collected data. This paper discusses the Falcon Gold spacecraft design and mission. It explores the rationale for conducting such an experiment, explains the concept of operations for this mission as well as the plan for processing the data following the two-week life of the satellite. The paper also details several spacecraft subsystems including the GPS translator, command and data handling, electrical power, communications, and structure. The verification plans and mission schedule are presented.