Introduction Star trackers are increasingly used on modern day spacecraft. With the rapid advancement of imaging hardware and high-speed computer processors, current trackers are small and routinely achieve arc-second attitude accuracy. Typical sampling rates for these trackers range from 1 to 10 Hz. As computer processor technology advances these frequencies will increase, leading to filter de...

Abstract This paper evaluates the possibility of having a star tracker device running space debris algorithms. A simple breadboard was developed to evaluate both stellar identification and The built with commercial off-the-shelf components, representing current resolution field view. algorithms were implemented tested, respectively: Tetra ASTRiDE. concept tested by taking pictures night sky sat...

Current state-of-the-art commercial star sensors typically weigh 15 pounds, attain 5 to 10 arcsecond accuracy, and use roughly 10 watts of power. Unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art commercial star sensors do not meet many of NASA’s “next-generation” spacecraft and instrument needs. Nor do they satisfy Air Force’s needs for micro/nano-satellite systems. In an effort to satisfy micro/nan...

A new star pattern recognition method is developed using singular value decomposition of a measured unit column vector matrix in a measurement frame and the corresponding cataloged vector matrix in a reference frame. It is shown that singular values and right singular vectors are invariant with respect to coordinate transformation and robust under uncertainty. One advantage of singular value co...