Cassini was the first spacecraft to use a Litton Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG)
but specifies "Litton". Linked in that answer is Hemispherical Resonator Gyro: an IRU for Cassini Proc. SPIE 2803, Cassini/Huygens: A Mission to the Saturnian Systems, (7 October 1996) which says in the abstract:
The JPL Inertial Reference Unit (IRU) is the single most sophisticated assembly on the Cassini spacecraft. At the core of the IRU is the state-of-the-art, Litton Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG).
and
The Cassini mission is the first use of an IRU for a deep space planetary mission that does not use a spun-mass sensor.
I don't know what a "spun-mass sensor" means exactly; uncertain if "spun" refers to part of a manufacturing process (e.g. spin casting which could certainly be used to make metal hemispheres, see also Acme Metal Spinning1) or to the sensor being based on a mass that is spinning.
But here I'd like to ask:
Questions:
- What was the first hemispherical resonator used in spaceflight?
- What was the first used on a deep space mission?
The following may be helpful (hat tip to Ng Ph):
1no affiliation; "ACME" anything is reminiscent of the rocket-based Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner Warner Brothers cartoons. Another example of a metal-spinning company.
