Physics Commons^™

Computational Efficiency Of A Hybrid Mass Concentration And Spherical Harmonic Modeling, Nathan Piepgrass

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Through Spherical Harmonics, one can describe complex gravitational fields. However as the order and degree of the spherical harmonics increases, the computation speed rises exponentially. In addition, for onboard applications of spherical harmonics, the processors are radiation hardened in order to mitigate negative effects of the space environment on electronics. But, those processors have outdated processing speeds, resulting in a slower onboard spherical harmonic program.

This thesis examines a partial solution to the slow computation speed of spherical harmonics programs. The partial solution was to supplant the gravity models in the flight software. The spherical harmonics gravity model can be …