Accurate Modelling the Attitude of the Gaia Satellite

Abstract

The Gaia Attitude Model (GAM) is a simulation package that is developed to achieve a detailed understanding of the Gaia spacecraft attitude. It takes into account external physical effects and considers internal hardware components controlling the satellite. The main goal of the Gaia mission is to obtain extremely accurate astrometry, and this requires a good knowledge of Gaia’s behaviour as a spinning rigid body under the influence of various disturbances.