Two-axis MOEMS Sun Sensor for Pico Satellites

Abstract

A MOEMS sun sensor has been designed for DTUsat – a Danish student CubeSat project at the Technical University of Denmark. On the magnetotorquer controlled DTUsat sun sensors are needed along with a mag-netometer to obtain unambiguous attitude determination for the ACDS and the payloads – an electrodynamic tether and a camera. Due to requirements such as low mass, high accuracy, and high FOV a solution dif-ferent from the currently available is needed. By utilising resources from space and micro processing related fields a SOI based two-axis linear slit sensor chip with ±70 ◦ FOV and a theoretical resolution of ∼ 0.07 ◦ has been designed. The chip design enables elimination of various ambient factors such as e.g. temperature and cosine dependencies. This paper describes design, functionality, and process sequence of the device. A PCB with the chip and measuring electronics has been designed with a mass below 3g. 1