ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

LN-3 inertial navigation system

Okay kiddo, have you ever played a game of hide and seek? Imagine you are playing with your friends in a big park, and you have to close your eyes and count to ten before finding them. But what if you wanted to find them without counting, say if you had a map or a compass to help you? Well, that's sort of what an ln-3 inertial navigation system does, but for airplanes.

An aircraft is like a big bird that can fly up in the sky. But when it's flying, it has to know where it's going or it might get lost. Just like we use a map or a GPS on our phone to find our way around, airplanes use an ln-3 inertial navigation system to figure out their position in the sky and how to get to their destination.

The ln-3 system has three components that work together: accelerometers, gyroscopes, and computers. Let's break each of them down.

Accelerometers are like tiny toys that measure how fast the aircraft is moving forward or backward, up or down, and side to side. Just like you would feel your body pushing back when a car speeds up, an accelerometer senses the same thing on an airplane. This information is sent to the computer.

Gyroscopes help the aircraft figure out which way is up and which way is down. If you spin a top and watch it wobble on its axis, that's what a gyroscope does, but inside the airplane, it's fixed in place. It helps the computer keep track of the airplane's orientation in the sky.

The computer then uses all the data from the accelerometers and gyroscopes to calculate the airplane's position, speed, and direction of flight. It's like a big calculator that takes all the information and comes up with the right answers.

So just like you might use your compass or Google Maps to find your way around, an ln-3 inertial navigation system helps airplanes navigate safely to their destination. It's one of the many pieces of technology that make air travel the amazing experience it is today.