Ball Aerospace Star Tracker Achieves High Tracking Accuracy for a Moving Star Field

Author

Michaels, Darren

Author_Institution

James Speed Ball Aerosp. & Technol. Corp., Boulder, CO

fYear

2005

fDate

5-12 March 2005

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

7

Abstract

Star trackers are traditionally a key component in spacecraft attitude control systems. Ball Aerospace has designed, developed and delivered the high accuracy star tracker (HAST). The HAST achieves 0.2 arcsec total error (1sigma) performance on each tracked star moving between 0.07 and 1.0 degrees/second. HAST maintains track on stars moving 0 to 4 degrees/second. Multiple star tracking further enhances the accuracy. This paper describes HAST and examines measured performance. Performance is assessed according to the three dominant error sources: 1) boresight alignment bias; 2) transit dependent bias; and 3) random measurement. The performance measurement techniques are described along with delivered product test results

Keywords

aerospace instrumentation; aircraft control; attitude control; Ball Aerospace; error sources; high accuracy star tracker; moving star field; spacecraft attitude control systems; tracking accuracy; Aerospace control; Attitude control; Business; Calibration; Charge coupled devices; Measurement; Senior members; Space technology; Space vehicles; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace Conference, 2005 IEEE

Conference_Location

Big Sky, MT

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8870-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AERO.2005.1559572

Filename

1559572