ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

In the early 2000s, AIRBUS Defence and Space SAS developed, in collaboration with Ixblue company, and with CNES and ESA support, a family of inertial reference units (IRU) for a wide range of space applications. This family of products, called "Astrix?", is based on the solid-state Fibre Optic Gyro (FOG) technology, with the Astrix 200 and Astrix 120 providing the highest performance solutions for space missions. In 2014, Airbus Defence and Space and Ixblue have qualified the Astrix 1090, a 3-axis gyro in a compact and single box configuration, dedicated to mid-level performance applications in high quality standards, such as Telecom platforms. More recently, in the frame of Exomars 2020, an enhanced version of the Astrix 1090 was developed in order to fulfil the challenging needs of planetary exploration missions such as interplanetary cruise, and Entry, Descent and Landing, which require high dynamic measurements and fine resolutions. Astrix 1090-A configuration was modified in order to implement 3 acceleration sensing axes in addition to the 3 gyro axes, leading to a compact IMU, based on European technology. The Astrix 1090-A was submitted to a specific validation campaign, representative of the mission constraints and has been successfully qualified with respect to Exomars requirements.