Pattern recognition of star constellations for spacecraft applications

Abstract

A software system for a star imager for online satellite attitude determination is described. The system works with a single standard commercial CCD camera with a high aperture lens and an onboard star catalog. It is capable of both an initial coarse attitude determination without any prior knowledge of the satellite orientation and a high-accuracy attitude determination based on prediction and averaging of several identified star constellations. In the high-accuracy mode the star image aims at an accuracy better than 2 arc sec with a processing time of less than a few seconds. The star imager has been developed for the Danish Oersted satellite.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>