Design and accuracy analysis for drift adjusting rotary axes of space camera

The drift adjusting rotary axes of space camera mainly provides the angular motion control of the camera in the horizontal direction, and performs the real-time control of azimuthal drift to realize the image motion compensation in the photo-taking process. The drift adjusting rotary axes determine to a large extent the photo-taking accuracy and the drift control accuracy of a camera. For the utilization of the plane of highly rigid external pedestal as the orbital plane of the thrust bearing, and the adoption of composite enclosed design in both radial and axial directions, the structure of rotary axes features light mass, free rotation and high rotational accuracy. A number of factors having effect on the accuracy of rotary axes, such as radial runout and angular swing, are discussed, and a quantitative analysis has also been made for the axial shaking error resulting from the form and position errors of the rotary axis components. The measured shaking error of the rotary axes indicated that the accuracy of the axes selected is 3.8", and satisfies the general technical specification of being within 5".