A Low-Cost Photodiode Sun Sensor for CubeSat and Planetary Microrover

This paper presents the development of low-cost methodologies to determine the attitude of a small, CubeSat-class satellite and a microrover relative to the sun's direction. The use of commercial hardware and simple embedded designs has become an effective path for university programs to put ex...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of aerospace engineering 2013-01, Vol.2013 (2013), p.1-9
Main Authors: Post, Mark A., Li, Junquan, Lee, Regina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Aerospace engineering
Aircraft industry
Arrays
Data processing
Light
Satellites
Sensors
Silicon wafers
Software
Technological change
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper presents the development of low-cost methodologies to determine the attitude of a small, CubeSat-class satellite and a microrover relative to the sun's direction. The use of commercial hardware and simple embedded designs has become an effective path for university programs to put experimental payloads in space for minimal cost, and the development of sensors for attitude and heading determination is often a critical part. The development of two compact and efficient but simple coarse sun sensor methodologies is presented in this research. A direct measurement of the solar angle uses a photodiode array sensor and slit mask. Another estimation of the solar angle uses current measurements from orthogonal arrays of solar cells. The two methodologies are tested and compared on ground hardware. Testing results show that coarse sun sensing is efficient even with minimal processing and complexity of design for satellite attitude determination systems and rover navigation systems.
ISSN:1687-5966
1687-5974
DOI:10.1155/2013/549080