High gain antenna calibration on three spacecraft

This paper describes the alignment calibration of spacecraft High Gain Antennas (HGAs) for three missions. For two of the missions (the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Solar Dynamics Observatory) the calibration was performed on orbit. For the third mission (the Global Precipitation Measurement core satellite) ground simulation of the calibration was performed in a calibration feasibility study. These three satellites provide a range of calibration situations—Lunar orbit transmitting to a ground antenna for LRO, geosynchronous orbit transmitting to a ground antenna for SDO, and low Earth orbit transmitting to TDRS satellites for GPM. The calibration results depend strongly on the quality and quantity of calibration data. With insufficient data the calibration function may give erroneous solutions. Manual intervention in the calibration allowed reliable parameters to be generated for all three missions.