This is the first installment of a series of articles on the determination of the rotation axis of a tumbling satellite. All of these article are based on an appendix of my Ph D Thesis, hence the sometimes more formal language.
I would like to thank Mike McCants, Walter Nissen, Rudolf Treumann, Patrick Wils for their help and interesting suggestions and ideas that I have used when writing these articles. I would also like to thank all observers whose data I have used.