Clementine Star Tracker Stellar Compass: Final report part 1

The Clementine mission provided the first ever complete, systematic surface mapping of the moon from the ultra-violet to the near-infrared regions. More than 1.7 million images of the moon, earth and space were returned from this mission. Two star stracker stellar compasses (star tracker camera + stellar compass software) were included on the spacecraft, serving a primary function of providing angle updates to the guidance and navigation system. These cameras served a secondary function by providing a wide field of view imaging capability for lunar horizon glow and other dark-side imaging data. This 290 g camera using a 576 x 384 focal plane array and a 17 mm entrance pupil, detected and centroided stars as dim and dimmer than 4.5 m{sub v}, providing rms pointing accuracy of better than 100 {mu}rad pitch and yaw and 450 {mu}rad roll. A description of this light-weight, low power star tracker camera along with a summary of lessons learned is presented. Design goals and preliminary on-orbit performance estimates are addressed in terms of meeting the mission`s primary objective for flight qualifying the sensors for future Department of Defense flights. Documentation generated during the design, analysis, build, test and characterization of the star tracker cameras are presented. Collectively, this documentation represents a small library of information for this camera, and may be used as a framework for producing copy units by commercial enterprises, and therefore satisfies a Department of Defense and Department of Energy goal to transfer technology to industry. However, the considerable knowledge gained from the experience of the individuals involved in the system trades, design, analysis, production, testing and characterization of the star tracker stellar compass is not contained in this documentation