Star Pattern Recognition and Spacecraft Attitude Determination

The purpose of the research activities described in this document is to research and develop a system for on-board attitude determination for satellites, achieving sub-five arc-second accuracy when such a system is interfaced with a general purpose star tracker (typical of several existing configura...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Strikwerda,Thomas E, Junkins,John L
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
ALGORITHMS
ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEMS
CELESTIAL NAVIGATION
CHARGE COUPLED DEVICES
Computer Hardware
ELECTROOPTICS
ERROR ANALYSIS
IMAGE PROCESSING
MATRICES(MATHEMATICS)
MICROCOMPUTERS
OPTICAL DETECTORS
PATTERN RECOGNITION
POSITION FINDING
REAL TIME
SATELLITE ATTITUDE
SPACE NAVIGATION
Space Navigation and Guidance
SPACE TECHNOLOGY
STAR TRACKERS
TRIANGULATION
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Summary:The purpose of the research activities described in this document is to research and develop a system for on-board attitude determination for satellites, achieving sub-five arc-second accuracy when such a system is interfaced with a general purpose star tracker (typical of several existing configurations). The primary motivation for this research is the exploitation of recently developed light sensitive Charge-Doupled-Devices (CCD) in the focal plane of a tracker lens. The CCD will act as a 'film' for imaging starlight and from which the attitude can be determined. The attitude determination can be performed on-board with a high degree of accuracy and high speed. A typical CCD for this application consists of about 200,000 light-sensitive elements or pixels, accurately imbedded (to 1 part in 10,000) in a microcircuit chip. The CCD can be scanned electronically and the voltage response of illuminated pixels digitized for processing by a microcomputer; corrections can be applied for image distortion based upon apriori calibration. (Author) See also report dated Oct 78, AD-A080 355.