Up to what accuracy (significant digits) does NASA measure it's angles?

Question

Please be specific and provide a link if you can, thanks.

Answer 1

nano's

Answer 2

It has to be extremely accurate.

1degree = 0.01745329 Radian

1 second of arc = 4.848 micro Radian

1milliRadian = 3' 26.26" arc.

At 1 AU , 1mR means an object 150,000 km across.

If a space probe heads for Jupiter where it has to deploy an antenna dish of extremely narrow beamwidth to increase antenna gain, both antennas (Earth station & Jupiter probe) restrict the error to less than even micro Radian or else miss the picture. Jupiter's closest approach is 4.2 AU (=630 million km), & you can't miss antenna beam by 630 km even. Or else you have to deploy an antenna of that aperture, keeping in view that the strength of the radio signal falls of at the rate of square of distance. If the distance increase thousand fold the signal strength decreases to millionths.

Answer 3

Depends on the sensor or basic data used. NASA has no standard accuracy.

Most navigation sensors only measure up 0.1° accurate, in terms of astronomy, you can expect milliarcseconds (mas) or less as accuracy for most telescopes.

The Hubble Space Telescope can for example locate stars with 0.2 mas accuracy.