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Star tracker

A star tracker is an optical sensor employed in spacecraft to determine the vehicle's attitude, or orientation in three-dimensional space, by capturing images of stars within its field of view and using algorithms to identify them against a catalog, thereby providing high-precision angular measurements relative to an inertial reference frame.^[1] These devices typically achieve arcsecond-level accuracy, surpassing other attitude sensors like gyroscopes or sun sensors, and enable autonomous operation even in "lost-in-space" scenarios where initial orientation knowledge is unavailable.^[2] The technology traces its origins to the late 1940s and early 1950s, when star trackers were initially developed for aircraft and missile guidance systems to provide celestial navigation references operable day or night.^[2] By the early 1960s, methods for onboard star identification emerged for space applications, with early implementations appearing in missions like NASA's Magsat satellite in 1979 for geomagnetic mapping.^[3] Charge-coupled devices (CCDs), invented in 1969, were incorporated into star trackers starting in the late 1970s, becoming more common in the 1980s. Significant advancements followed, including deployment on the Space Shuttle Columbia during its 1981 maiden flight and on ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in 1995, marking the introduction of high-resolution models.^[4]^[5] Over decades, evolution has focused on miniaturization, radiation hardening, and integration of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) imagers for improved performance in harsh space environments.^[1] At their core, star trackers consist of a baffle to exclude extraneous light from sources like the Sun or Earth, an optical system including lenses to form defocused star images, a detector array (such as CCDs or CMOS sensors) to capture photon distributions, and onboard processing units for centroid estimation and pattern matching against star catalogs.^[1] The function relies on centroiding algorithms to compute the precise position of each star's image, followed by geometric triangulation to derive the spacecraft's roll, pitch, and yaw angles, often updated at rates of several hertz for real-time control.^[2] Modern variants incorporate wide fields of view (up to 20 degrees) and thousands of cataloged stars to ensure reliability across diverse orbital conditions, while mitigating errors from optical aberrations or thermal distortions.^[6] Star trackers are indispensable for a wide array of space missions, including Earth observation satellites like CryoSat-2 (launched 2010) for ice monitoring, deep-space probes such as Japan's Hayabusa for asteroid sample return, and constellations requiring precise pointing for communications or imaging.^[1] Their role extends to enabling autonomous operations in resource-constrained small satellites and emerging applications like space surveillance for tracking orbital debris.^[7] Ongoing research emphasizes hybrid systems fusing star tracker data with inertial measurement units for enhanced robustness, reflecting their status as a cornerstone of spacecraft navigation technology.^[2]

Fundamentals

Definition and purpose

A star tracker is an optical instrument that measures the positions of stars to determine a spacecraft's attitude, defined as its three-axis orientation relative to an inertial reference frame established by the fixed stars.^[8] This device typically employs a camera to capture star images and processes them to compute precise angular deviations from a known stellar catalog, enabling autonomous attitude estimation without external aids.^[9] The primary purpose of a star tracker is to provide high-precision attitude data for spacecraft navigation, stabilization, and pointing control during space missions, thereby minimizing dependence on ground-based tracking systems or other sensors.^[10] By delivering real-time orientation information, it supports critical operations such as aligning solar panels, directing antennas toward Earth, or orienting scientific instruments toward targets.^[11] Key benefits include arcsecond-level accuracy, often better than 1 arcsecond, which surpasses many alternative sensors for fine attitude control.^[8] Unlike Earth-horizon sensors or magnetometers, star trackers operate independently of planetary references, functioning effectively in deep space where such aids are unavailable.^[9] This autonomy enhances mission reliability for interplanetary probes, with the technology first employed in the 1960s on missions like Mariner 4.^[10]

Basic components

A star tracker's optical system primarily consists of a baffle designed to reject stray light from sources such as the Sun or Earth, ensuring that only stellar light reaches the sensor.^[12] This baffle is typically a series of vanes or apertures that block off-axis light while allowing the desired field of view to pass.^[13] The system also includes a lens or small telescope that focuses incoming starlight onto the focal plane, forming sharp images of stars for subsequent detection.^[14] The detector at the heart of the star tracker is usually a charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensor array.^[14]^[15] These sensors convert the focused starlight into electrical signals by capturing the intensity distribution across a grid of pixels, where brighter stars produce higher pixel values corresponding to their apparent magnitude.^[16] Supporting the detector, the electronics subsystem features an onboard processor that handles image readout from the sensor, performs analog-to-digital conversion to digitize the pixel data, and applies basic filtering to reduce noise such as cosmic ray hits or hot pixels.^[17]^[18] This initial processing prepares the raw image for attitude determination without involving complex algorithms. Mechanically, the star tracker is encased in a robust housing that provides thermal isolation to maintain stable operating temperatures amid space environment fluctuations and vibration isolation to protect sensitive optics from launch and on-orbit disturbances.^[19]^[20] The design typically yields a field of view between 10 and 20 degrees, balancing the need for sufficient stars in the image with optical resolution.^[21] Star trackers operate with low power requirements, generally under 10 W, to align with spacecraft energy constraints.^[22] They interface with the spacecraft via standard data buses such as MIL-STD-1553 for reliable transmission of attitude data and commands.^[23]

Operating Principles

Star detection and acquisition

Star trackers capture images of the celestial sphere periodically using charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensors to form star field images.^[24] These exposures typically last from milliseconds to seconds, with common durations of 20–100 ms for stars up to visual magnitude 5–6, adjusted based on spacecraft dynamics to minimize motion-induced smear while ensuring sufficient signal for detection.^[25] For instance, at angular velocities of 1–2°/s, optimal exposures around 20–30 ms maintain detection limits near magnitude 5.5–6.0.^[26] Once captured, the image undergoes processing to identify star positions through centroiding, which computes the intensity-weighted average of pixel clusters to achieve sub-pixel accuracy.^[27] This involves summing pixel intensities within a region of interest (ROI), typically a 9x9 pixel window, and calculating coordinates as x_c = \frac{\sum x \cdot I(x,y)}{\sum I(x,y)} and y_c = \frac{\sum y \cdot I(x,y)}{\sum I(x,y)}, where I(x,y) is the pixel intensity, often assuming a Gaussian point spread function for stars.^[24] Centroiding yields positions accurate to 1/25 pixel or better, enabling precise attitude measurements even under noise from dark current or read noise.^[28] Star trackers operate in distinct acquisition modes to handle initial orientation and ongoing tracking. In lost-in-space mode, the system performs blind acquisition by capturing an image and matching the observed star pattern—derived from centroids—against an onboard catalog using algorithms like triangle pattern recognition or geometric hashing, without prior attitude knowledge.^[24] Upon successful identification of at least three stars, it transitions to track mode, where it continuously monitors and updates positions of known stars at rates up to 5–10 Hz for real-time attitude refinement.^[28] To reject noise and false positives, images are filtered using thresholding based on signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), typically requiring SNR > 20–50 dB for valid stars, combined with size and brightness criteria to exclude cosmic rays, hot pixels, or planets.^[29] Techniques include median filtering, dark frame subtraction, and adaptive local thresholding to segment star spots from background interference, ensuring only Gaussian-distributed stellar signals are processed.^[24] This noise rejection maintains low false positive rates, often below 0.1% in simulations with centroid errors up to 1 pixel.^[30] Identification relies on integration with onboard star catalogs, which store positions and magnitudes of 100–1000 bright stars (e.g., magnitude ≤5 from Hipparcos or Yale catalogs) precomputed for the tracker's field of view, typically 5–10°.^[24] These reduced catalogs enable efficient pattern matching by generating unique angular separations or hash tables, allowing rapid lookup during acquisition—often in milliseconds—while minimizing storage to fit embedded processors.^[30] For example, catalogs of ~300–500 stars suffice for most fields of view, balancing comprehensiveness with computational speed.^[31]

Attitude determination algorithms

Attitude determination in star trackers involves computational algorithms that estimate the spacecraft's orientation by aligning observed star positions in the body frame with their known inertial coordinates. These algorithms typically represent the attitude as a rotation between coordinate frames, often using quaternions to avoid the singularities inherent in Euler angle representations, such as gimbal lock, while providing computational efficiency for onboard processing.^[32] Quaternions, consisting of four elements (a scalar and a three-vector), parameterize three-dimensional rotations compactly and maintain orthogonality through unit norm constraints, making them suitable for iterative estimation methods.^[32] A foundational deterministic approach is the TRIAD algorithm, which computes the attitude matrix using measurements from just two stars. Developed by Harold Black, it constructs an orthogonal triad by normalizing the first measured vector \mathbf{s}_1 to form \mathbf{e}_1 = \mathbf{s}_1 / \|\mathbf{s}_1\|, computing the cross-product \mathbf{e}_3 = (\mathbf{s}_1 \times \mathbf{s}_2) / \|\mathbf{s}_1 \times \mathbf{s}_2\| for the third axis, and deriving \mathbf{e}_2 = \mathbf{e}_3 \times \mathbf{e}_1 for the second; the attitude matrix A is then formed with these unit vectors as columns, aligned against corresponding reference vectors.^[33] This method provides a simple, non-iterative solution but assumes perfect vector identification and offers no optimality for more than two observations.^[33] For enhanced accuracy with multiple observations, optimal algorithms solve Wahba's problem, which seeks the attitude matrix A minimizing the loss function J = \sum ( \mathbf{a}_i - A \mathbf{b}_i )^2, where \mathbf{a}_i are measured unit vectors in the body frame, \mathbf{b}_i are reference unit vectors in the inertial frame, and the sum is over N star pairs (typically N \geq 2).^[34] The QUEST (Quaternion ESTimator) algorithm, introduced by Malcolm Shuster, provides a least-squares solution to this problem by formulating it in quaternion space, solving the eigenvalue equation K \mathbf{q} = \lambda_{\max} \mathbf{q} where K is the 4x4 attitude profile matrix constructed from the vector pairs and \mathbf{q} is the quaternion eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue \lambda_{\max}.^[35] This approach yields the optimal attitude estimate without singularities and is computationally efficient for real-time implementation, often using Newton-Raphson iteration to find \lambda_{\max}.^[35] In dynamic environments, Kalman filtering integrates star tracker measurements with gyroscope data for continuous attitude estimation. The seminal multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF), developed by Lefferts, Markley, and Shuster, models the attitude error as a small quaternion perturbation and fuses vector observations from star trackers with angular rate increments from gyros, incorporating process noise to account for unmodeled dynamics like environmental torques or sensor biases.^[36] The filter propagates the state using gyro rates between updates and corrects with star-derived quaternions, achieving real-time performance by linearizing the nonlinear dynamics around the current estimate.^[36] Multi-star processing enhances robustness in QUEST and Kalman-based methods by incorporating 3 to 10 identified stars per frame, providing redundancy against individual measurement errors such as cosmic ray hits or centroiding inaccuracies.^[35] This over-determination allows weighted least-squares minimization in Wahba's framework, where weights reflect measurement covariances, improving attitude accuracy and enabling outlier rejection through residual analysis.^[35]

Historical Development

Early inventions and prototypes

The development of star trackers originated in ground-based applications for navigation, particularly in aviation and naval contexts during the 1940s. Traditional sextants, used for celestial observations to determine position, were adapted for airborne use with retractable periscopic designs on long-range military aircraft like the Lockheed RC-121D, allowing navigators to measure star altitudes through aircraft domes despite motion and limited visibility.^[37] These manual tools marked an early step toward automated systems, as efforts began to integrate photoelectric sensors for more reliable star position measurements in dynamic environments.^[38] In the 1950s, star trackers evolved into automated devices for military applications, including long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Systems employing photomultiplier tubes, such as the 1P21 type, were developed to detect star positions with motors and vacuum tubes for guidance, as seen in aircraft like the B-52 and missiles like the SNARK.^[10] These prototypes addressed the need for inertial navigation corrections by periodically tracking fixed stars like Canopus to update orientation. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory contributed significantly to early space-oriented designs, conducting the first attempt to operate a star tracker above Earth's atmosphere in 1959 via the Stratolab High balloon experiment aimed at Venus observations.^[10] The 1960s saw the transition to space prototypes, with initial testing focused on manual star sighting systems that laid the groundwork for fully automated trackers. For the Apollo program, sextant-based star trackers, enabling astronauts to align with specific stars for attitude verification, were tested on Gemini missions in 1965 and 1966.^[39] These devices, integrated with onboard computers, allowed manual acquisition of star positions through periscopes and sextants, achieving alignments critical for rendezvous and docking maneuvers. Key contributions came from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where teams under director William H. Pickering advanced proposals for automated stellar navigation in deep space probes starting in the late 1950s, influencing designs like the Canopus tracker used on Mariner missions.^[10] Early prototypes faced significant challenges in adapting to space environments, including miniaturization to fit compact spacecraft payloads and radiation hardening to withstand cosmic rays and solar flares without degrading photomultiplier performance.^[10] These hurdles were overcome through iterative testing in balloons and suborbital flights, ensuring reliability in vacuum conditions where traditional ground systems failed due to size and sensitivity issues.^[10]

Evolution in space missions

NASA's Magsat satellite, launched in 1979, represented an early orbital implementation of star trackers for precise attitude determination in geomagnetic mapping missions.^[40] The Voyager missions in the 1970s marked a significant advancement in star tracker application for deep space exploration, utilizing a Canopus star tracker as part of the attitude and articulation control subsystem to provide roll reference with high precision. Developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this single-star tracker, combined with sun sensors and inertial reference units, enabled the spacecraft to maintain pointing accuracy with an error of less than 0.01 degrees, essential for long-duration missions to the outer planets.^[41]^[42] Star trackers were also deployed on the Space Shuttle Columbia during its 1981 maiden flight, providing attitude data for the reusable orbiter.^[4] In the 1980s, the Hubble Space Telescope incorporated fine guidance sensors (FGS) that functioned as advanced star trackers, revolutionizing precise pointing for astronomical observations. These three redundant FGS units, each capable of tracking guide stars with an accuracy of 0.01 arcseconds, allowed the telescope to lock onto targets and correct for jitter, supporting diffraction-limited imaging over extended periods. This integration highlighted the transition toward more sophisticated optical systems for observatory-class missions.^[43] During the 1990s and 2000s, star trackers evolved into miniaturized, hybrid systems for planetary missions, as seen in the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which relied on compact star sensors during the cruise phase for attitude determination alongside gyroscopes and sun sensors. These units, building on the Mars Pathfinder design, provided autonomous navigation for interplanetary transfer, enabling precise trajectory corrections with reduced size, weight, and power demands suitable for rover delivery spacecraft. On the [International Space Station](/page/International_Space Station) (ISS), multiple star trackers have been deployed since the early 2000s for attitude control during assembly, docking, and maintenance operations, incorporating redundancy protocols to ensure fault-tolerant pointing amid frequent crew activities and module additions.^[44]^[45]^[46] Key milestones in this evolution include the shift to digital processing and CCD-based imaging in the 1980s, which improved star detection reliability and reduced sensitivity to vibration compared to earlier vidicon systems. Post-2000, the adoption of star trackers expanded to commercial satellites, driven by miniaturization and cost reductions, enabling high-accuracy attitude control in constellations like those for Earth observation and communications.^[47]

Modern Technologies

Sensor and hardware designs

Modern star trackers have transitioned from charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors to complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, driven by the latter's advantages in lower power consumption and improved radiation tolerance. CCDs suffer from degradation in charge transfer efficiency due to proton irradiation in space environments, whereas CMOS sensors, particularly active pixel sensors (APS), mitigate these issues by integrating amplification and signal processing at the pixel level, reducing susceptibility to radiation-induced noise. This evolution enables more reliable operation in harsh orbital conditions while minimizing onboard power demands.^[48]^[49]^[18] The optical design of star trackers balances field of view (FOV) and aperture size to optimize precision and acquisition capabilities. Narrow FOVs of 2-5 degrees, paired with apertures of 50-100 mm, provide high angular resolution for fine attitude determination by capturing detailed images of a limited sky region, essential for missions requiring arcsecond-level accuracy. In contrast, wider FOVs exceeding 20 degrees facilitate rapid star acquisition during initial alignment or in dynamic maneuvers, though they may compromise resolution due to the smaller effective focal length. Typical apertures in this range, such as 50 mm with a 9-degree FOV, support imaging across visible to short-wave infrared spectra for versatile performance.^[50]^[21]^[51]^[9] Radiation hardening is a critical aspect of star tracker hardware, incorporating shielded electronics and error-correcting memory to withstand high-radiation orbits like those in geostationary or interplanetary trajectories. Shielding uses materials such as tantalum or aluminum enclosures to deflect ionizing particles, while error-correcting code (ECC) memory detects and repairs single-event upsets in data storage. These techniques ensure sustained functionality, with components qualified to total ionizing dose levels beyond 100 krad and latch-up immunity. Recent designs, including those from Sodern's Auriga series, feature enhanced radiation hardening suitable for Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) missions as of 2025. Modern designs, including those from Sodern's Auriga series, select rad-hardened image sensors and processors to maintain performance over multi-year missions.^[52]^[53]^[54]^[55]^[56] Miniaturization trends have enabled star trackers compatible with CubeSats and small satellites, reducing mass to under 0.5 kg without sacrificing essential functionality. These compact units feature integrated optics and processing in volumes as small as 60 x 60 x 140 mm, supporting low-Earth orbit missions with constrained resources. The Sinclair Interplanetary ST-16 series exemplifies this, weighing approximately 90 g and offering a 16-degree FOV for reliable attitude estimation in nanosatellite applications. Such designs prioritize thermal stability and vibration resistance alongside size reduction.^[57]^[58]^[59] Hybrid systems enhance star tracker reliability by integrating them with inertial measurement units (IMUs) or auxiliary star cameras, providing redundant data streams for fault-tolerant attitude determination. IMU fusion compensates for temporary star occlusions, such as during thruster firings, by combining gyroscopic rates with stellar observations to maintain continuity. Star camera integration, often in multi-head configurations, expands effective FOV and enables cross-verification of detections. These architectures, as explored in NASA evaluations, achieve sub-arcsecond accuracy in combined modes for demanding missions.^[26]^[60]^[61]

Software and processing techniques

Modern star trackers rely on specialized onboard computing architectures to handle the demanding requirements of real-time image processing in the harsh space environment. Radiation-hardened processors, such as the RAD750, provide the computational backbone for spacecraft systems that integrate star tracker data, enabling reliable operation under high radiation levels. These processors often execute software on real-time operating systems like VxWorks, which manages the star tracker camera operations and performs essential image analysis tasks, including centroid extraction and pattern matching. This setup ensures low-latency processing critical for attitude updates at rates up to several hertz. Research into advanced identification techniques explores neural network-based methods to enhance robustness, particularly for lost-in-space (LIS) recovery scenarios where no prior attitude knowledge is available. For instance, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and graph neural networks (GNNs) have been proposed for efficient star pattern recognition, achieving high accuracy even with noisy or partial observations by learning invariant features from star images. Machine learning algorithms, such as autoencoders or recurrent neural networks, further support anomaly detection in star tracker outputs, identifying issues like false positives from cosmic rays or sensor degradation to maintain data integrity during missions.^[62] Data fusion in star trackers typically involves extended Kalman filters (EKFs) to integrate star observations with complementary sensors for improved attitude estimation. These filters combine star tracker quaternions with gyroscope rate data to provide continuous, high-frequency attitude updates, mitigating the star tracker's intermittent measurement gaps. When GPS data is available, EKFs extend this fusion to include position aiding, enhancing overall navigation accuracy in low-Earth orbit or interplanetary missions. Catalog management software in star trackers handles the onboard star databases, which typically contain 500 to several thousand bright stars for reliable identification. Dynamic updates to these catalogs can be performed via ground uploads to account for mission-specific needs or long-term changes, such as stellar proper motion over extended durations. Exclusion zones for bright objects like the Sun and Moon are programmatically enforced, with typical Sun exclusion angles of 35° to 45° to prevent sensor saturation and ensure safe operation. Fault tolerance mechanisms in star tracker software include redundant processing chains, where multiple units or backup algorithms operate in parallel to detect and switch upon failures. Self-calibration routines autonomously adjust for distortions or misalignments using observed star data, preserving accuracy over mission lifetimes exceeding 10 years without ground intervention. These features, combined with error-correcting codes in processing pipelines, enable sustained performance in radiation-heavy environments.

Applications and Performance

Primary uses in spacecraft

Star trackers serve as the primary sensors in attitude control systems for three-axis stabilized spacecraft, providing high-precision orientation data essential for slew maneuvers and fine pointing operations. In such systems, they enable accurate alignment of instruments and antennas by continuously measuring the spacecraft's attitude relative to the fixed celestial sphere, often integrated with gyroscopes for rate information during dynamic phases. For instance, the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) mission utilized an Autonomous Star Tracker (AST-201R) as its main attitude sensor to achieve nadir pointing accuracy of 0.03 degrees across all axes, supporting high-resolution Earth imaging tasks.^[63] In deep space navigation, star trackers facilitate autonomous orientation for interstellar probes by leveraging stars as unchanging references, independent of proximity to Earth or other navigation aids. This capability is crucial for long-duration missions where precise attitude knowledge ensures effective data transmission and instrument pointing toward distant targets. The New Horizons spacecraft, for example, employs two redundant star trackers that capture wide-angle images 10 times per second, comparing star positions against an onboard catalog of approximately 3,000 stars to determine orientation, which is then used to command thruster adjustments via the guidance and control processor.^[64] For formation flying in satellite constellations, star trackers enable relative attitude determination between multiple spacecraft, maintaining precise inter-satellite alignments necessary for collaborative measurements. By providing each satellite's absolute orientation, they support the computation of relative poses, which is vital for missions involving differential observations. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission incorporates a Star Tracker Assembly with three redundant heads to enhance attitude data availability and accuracy, allowing the twin satellites to track their positions relative to stars for synchronized gravity field mapping.^[65] Star trackers also function as backup and redundancy components in attitude determination systems, serving as fallbacks in GPS-denied environments or during thruster firings when primary sensors like gyros may drift. Multiple units are often installed to mitigate single-point failures, ensuring continuous operation. In the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) mission, a redundant star tracker was incorporated alongside the primary unit to maintain reliable attitude control, given the critical role of the technology in the mission's success.^[66] In commercial applications, star trackers are increasingly integrated into low-Earth orbit (LEO) CubeSats to support imaging and communication alignment, enabling cost-effective precise pointing for Earth observation and data relay tasks. These compact devices allow small satellites to achieve attitude accuracies sufficient for high-resolution photography and antenna steering toward ground stations, democratizing advanced navigation for private ventures. For example, commercial providers have supplied over 50 star trackers to CubeSat missions up to 150 kg in LEO, facilitating agile orientation in dense orbital environments.^[67] As of 2024, advancements include models like the ASTRO APS and ST400-T, which support emerging roles in space debris monitoring for small satellites, enhancing orbital surveillance capabilities.^[68]^[67]

Accuracy metrics and limitations

Star trackers achieve boresight accuracy typically in the range of 1 to 10 arcseconds (0.0003 to 0.003 degrees) for commercial units, enabling precise attitude determination for most spacecraft operations.^[68]^[69] For scientific missions requiring higher precision, such as those involving detailed astronomical observations, sub-arcsecond performance is attainable, with some advanced models reaching 0.1 arcseconds.^[70]^[9] Recent commercial models as of 2024, such as the ST400-T, maintain accuracies around 10 arcseconds while supporting small satellite markets projected to grow significantly by 2030.^[68]^[71] Key performance metrics include boresight accuracy, which measures the alignment error of the sensor's optical axis relative to the determined attitude; field-of-view mapping errors, arising from optical distortions that can introduce centroiding inaccuracies up to several arcseconds; and update rates, commonly ranging from 1 to 10 Hz to support real-time attitude updates.^[72]^[69] These metrics ensure reliable quaternion outputs for spacecraft control, though mapping errors are minimized through calibration to maintain overall system fidelity.^[68] A primary limitation is obscuration by bright sources, such as the Sun within a 40-degree exclusion half-angle, which overwhelms the detector and prevents star detection, leading to temporary loss of attitude knowledge.^[73] Star trackers are also susceptible to radiation-induced bit flips in electronics and memory, particularly in high-radiation environments like geostationary orbits, which can corrupt star identification data and require error-correcting codes for mitigation.^[74] Additionally, acquisition time in lost-in-space mode, where initial attitude must be determined without prior knowledge, can extend up to several minutes depending on the number of visible stars and processing speed.^[75] Environmental factors further constrain performance, with thermal distortions in optics and mounting structures causing misalignment and pointing errors of up to arcseconds during temperature fluctuations in orbit.^[76] Vibrations from launch phases or thruster firings reduce centroid precision by blurring star images, potentially degrading accuracy to tens of arcseconds until stabilization.^[77] To address these limitations, mitigation strategies include high-rate sampling, often combined with inertial measurement units to bridge gaps during obscuration periods, and multi-unit configurations that provide redundancy for achieving 99.9% operational uptime by ensuring at least one tracker remains functional.^[26]^[57]

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This paper is declared a work of the U.S. Government and therefore is in the public domain. 417. Page 3. 418. LEFFERTS, MARKLEY, AND SHUSTER.
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Celestial Navigation: How Did Aviators “Shoot” the Sun and Stars?
Navigators on civilian airliners and long-range military aircraft, such as the Lockheed RC-121D, began using retractable periscopic sextants in the late 1940s.
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Navigation: From Dead Reckoning to Navstar GPS
a simple radio beacon. The pilot could navigate between the two stations by ...
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The Star Charts That Apollo 11 Astronauts Used to Land on the Moon
Oct 17, 2014 · These star charts were part of a guidance and navigation (G&N) dictionary carried by the Apollo 11 lunar module when it reached the moon's surface on July 20, ...
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Did You Know? - NASA Science
The Voyager spacecraft can point its scientific instruments on the scan platform to an accuracy of better than one-tenth of a degree. This is comparable to ...Missing: Aerospace | Show results with:Aerospace<|control11|><|separator|>
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Voyager Saturn encounter attitude and articulation control experience
The Voyager attitude and articulation control system is designed for a three-axis stabilized spacecraft; it uses a biasable sun sensor and a Canopus Star ...Missing: determination | Show results with:determination
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Hubble's Instruments: FGS - Fine Guidance Sensors
The fine guidance sensors are one type of sensor used by Hubble's pointing control system to aim the telescope at a target with an accuracy of 0.01 arcsecond.Missing: tracker | Show results with:tracker
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Design and optimization of navigation and guidance techniques for ...
The development of the cruise stage is based on the Mars Pathfinder mission. The attitude determination was achieved using Sun sensors and star sensors, while ...
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Mechanical Design of the Mars Pathfinder Mission
These elements included: . Solar Panels for Cruise Power . Low Gain Antenna . Propulsion Thrusters for Attitude Control . Propellant Tanks S Star Tracker .
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[PDF] GPS on International Space Station (ISS) and Crew Return Vehicle ...
Two star trackers were flown as independent attitude truth sources, and an LIIL2 keyed GPS receiver was used for position, velocity comparison.
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[PDF] THE OFFICINE GALILEO AUTONOMOUS STAR TRACKER
Starting from 1995 Officine Galileo is working to develop a family of autonomous Star Trackers capable of providing attitude information without any a-priori ...
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A High Full Well Capacity CMOS Image Sensor for Space Applications
Mar 28, 2019 · The performance of CCDs is very sensitive to radiation in space. Charge transfer efficiency (CTE) of CCDs is degraded by proton irradiation, ...
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Jul 2, 2021 · With respect to CCDs, the radiation tolerance could be greatly increased by sensing the signal charge within its own pixel, instead of ...
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[PDF] SWIR Star Tracking - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
A star tracker operates using the fundamental measurement of the star light angle of arrival. The standard technique is to use a pixel array with a lens ...Missing: components | Show results with:components
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Optical imaging system for an all-time star sensor based on field of ...
5 . The aperture, focal length, and FOV of the prepositive telescope are 100 mm, 300 mm, and 6°, respectively.
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[PDF] Radiation-Hard Breadboard Star Tracker. - DTIC
RCA is active in the hardening of CMOS semiconductors. Many of the 4000. Series devices can be hardened to 106 rad levels. In fact, BASD designed a focal plane ...
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[PDF] Star Tracker Algorithm Improvements to Restore Performance After ...
These effects reduce the dynamic range of the sensor, compromising the sensor's ability to detect faint stars, and increasing the processing required to filter.
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How Auriga™ design choices ensures its reliability and radiation ...
Oct 25, 2024 · In this paper, we will explain how the electronic components and the image sensors for our star trackers are selected, in order to propose ...
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[PDF] AUTONOMOUS STAR TRACKERS - Leonardo - Space
The trackers feature robust and accurate three axis attitude determination with very low mass and power consumption for the class of instrument.
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[PDF] Flight Qualification of the ST-16 Star Tracker - DigitalCommons@USU
The first launch of a pair of 90 gram Sinclair Interplanetary ST-16 star trackers was in November, 2013 on-board the Skybox Imaging SkySat-1 satellite. The ...
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A Compressed and High-Accuracy Star Tracker with On-Orbit ... - MDPI
Jun 26, 2021 · A star tracker usually consists of baffle, lens, imaging detector and its signal processing circuits. If the size of some parts is changed ...5. Results · 5.4. Stray Light Suppression... · 5.5. Accuracy And Dynamic...
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Second Generation Star Tracker (ST-16RT2) - Satsearch
Jun 11, 2021 · Sinclair Interplanetary builds high-performance star trackers and baffles for small spacecraft with demonstrated orbital operation with full moon in FOV.Missing: CubeSat 16RS
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[PDF] Integration of a Star Tracker and Inertial Sensors Using an Attitude ...
The article outlines the alignment of camera optical axis in relation to the gravitational direction and time as the basic concept behind this system. Although ...
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Jan 5, 2015 · A software tool for estimating cross-boresight error of a star tracker combined with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) was developed to ...
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[PDF] On-Orbit Performance of Autonomous Star Trackers*
Star Tracker (AST) is used as a primary sensor for attitude determination for these three missions. IMAGE and DS-1 are spin-stabilized spacecraft, and EO-1.
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Spacecraft - New Horizons
The star-tracking cameras store a map of about 3,000 stars; 10 times per second one of the cameras snaps a wide-angle picture of space, compares the locations ...<|control11|><|separator|>
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Attitude and Orbit Control System - GRACE-FO - NASA
The GRACE mission used two star tracker camera heads. The GRACE-FO design increases attitude data availability and accuracy about all spacecraft axes. The gyro ...
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[PDF] Backup Attitude Control Algorithms for the MAP Spacecraft
Because the star tracker used on MAP was a complex piece of new technology critical to the success of the mission, a redundant tracker was added. Also, the fact ...
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Upgraded star trackers could give more satellites a debris ...
Oct 20, 2023 · Star trackers use the known position of stars to help keep satellites properly oriented and pointing in the right direction. Belgian spacecraft ...
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Trending Star Trackers in 2024 - SatNow
Dec 4, 2024 · It has an exclusion HFOV of 41 degrees (Sun - Cubesat baffle) and 30 degrees (Sun - Standard baffle). It is radiation-hardened up to 10 Krad and ...Missing: management | Show results with:management
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[PDF] Accuracy Performance of Star Trackers–A Tutorial - Sci-Hub
An autonomous star tracker is an avionics instrument used to provide the absolute 3-axis attitude of a spacecraft utilizing star observations.<|control11|><|separator|>
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Unrivalled High Accuracy Star Tracker - ESA Space Economy
The ASTRO XP star tracker, developed by Jena-Optronik, is an autonomous, high-accuracy (0.1 arcsec) sensor, improving state-of-the-art technology.Missing: 1-10 | Show results with:1-10
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5.0 Guidance, Navigation, and Control - NASA
Mar 13, 2025 · Typical components included are reaction wheels, magnetometer, magnetic torquers, fine and/or coarse Sun sensors, GPS, and star trackers.
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Miniaturised star tracker (AA-STR) ready to fly - NASA ADS
Many technological improvements have been gained in the last years, so that present APS's feature radiation hardened design, on chip AID converter and Fixed ...Missing: early | Show results with:early
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[PDF] Test and Performance Analysis of the New Star Tracker STELLA
case of bit flipping through radiation effects. – For optimal adaption of the star tracker to the space environment in different orbits and for various.
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MSTI3 star tracker attitude determination and estimation algorithm
The Lost In Space (LIS) stellar acquisition algorithm takes less than a minute to identify the star pattern on a stand-alone 860 processor. However, on the.
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[PDF] COMPENSATION FOR TIME-DEPENDENT STAR TRACKER ...
COMPENSATION FOR TIME-DEPENDENT STAR TRACKER THERMAL. DEFORMATION ON THE AQUA ... To better understand the details of fhe effect of sensor misalignment ...
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[PDF] Extremely Accurate Star Tracker for Celestial Navigation
The fibers are very sensitive thermal and vibration transducers. The testbed has been enclosed in a portable soft wall clean room to reduce these environmental ...