The goal of the Gaia mission is to achieve micro-arcsecond astrometry, making Gaia the most important astro- metric space mission of the 21st century. To achieve this performance several innovative technological solutions have been realized as part of the satellite's scientific payload. A critical component of the Gaia scientific pay- load is the Basic Angle Monitoring device (BAM), an interferometric metrology instrument with the task of monitoring, to some picometers, the variation of the Basic Angle between Gaia's two telescopes. In this paper we provide an overview of the AVU/BAM software, running at the Italian Data Processing Center (DPCT), to analyze the BAM data and to recover the basic angle variations at the micro-arcosecond level. Outputs based on preliminary data from Gaia's Commissioning phase are shown as an example.

Date Published: 4 August 2014
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9150, Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy VI, 91501Z (4 August 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2056592

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9150:
Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy VI
George Z. Angeli; Philippe Dierickx, Editor(s)