A gyro stabilized airborne gravimetry platform

A Gyro Stabilized Airborne Gravimetry platform that meets present day needs of one (1) milli-gal for measuring gravity anomalies from an aircraft will be presented. The technique, although not necessarily new, has been up-graded by state-of-the-art, present day, inertial components, (ie, gyroscopes and accelerometers), improved mechanical platform piece-parts, improved electronics and computational power, and better thermal control which all contribute to yielding better stabilization, filtering. and navigation. in addition, the Global Positioning System(GPS) is integrated to provide more precise altitude information along with navigation aiding and inertial acceleration information. A three (3)-axis. gyro-stabilized, gimbal platform employs two (2), two-degree-of-freedom, dry. free-rotor, tuned gyros, of inertial grade quality, along with three (3) pendulous accelerometers. The local vertical indicating accelerometer (gravimeter) is of higher quality than the two (2) horizontal accelerometers. A design description and test results on the performance of the gyroscopes and accelerometers will be emphasized in the presentation, along with a brief description of the integrated implementation of GPS aiding.