The quality of space telescope observations greatly depends on the pointing performance of the spacecraft. In this paper, recent advances in star tracker algorithms are discussed. This paper discusses efficient star tracker algorithms that improve the pointing performance of the satellite, resulting in observations of higher quality. Furthermore, the greatly reduced computational cost of these algorithms facilitates the inclusion of astronomical payload measurements in the attitude determination and control loop. When the payload is used as an additional star tracker, the pointing performance of the spacecraft increases drastically, which in its turn improves the quality of the scientific measurements. Simulations show that with these improvements, the absolute pointing error of the spacecraft can be reduced considerably.

Date Published: 18 July 2014
PDF: 17 pages
Proc. SPIE 9151, Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation, 915139 (18 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055094

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9151:
Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation
Ramón Navarro; Colin R. Cunningham; Allison A. Barto, Editor(s)