Open AccessNovel approach to improve the attitude update rate of a star tracker
Author(s) -
Shuo Zhang,
Fei Xing,
Ting Sun,
Zheng You,
Max Wei
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.26.005164
Subject(s) - star tracker , star (game theory) , rolling shutter , attitude control , computer science , spacecraft , shutter , tracking (education) , rotation (mathematics) , artificial intelligence , computer vision , physics , optics , astronomy , engineering , aerospace engineering , astrophysics , psychology , pedagogy
The star tracker is widely used in attitude control systems of spacecraft for attitude measurement. The attitude update rate of a star tracker is important to guarantee the attitude control performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to improve the attitude update rate of a star tracker. The electronic Rolling Shutter (RS) imaging mode of the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor in the star tracker is applied to acquire star images in which the star spots are exposed with row-to-row time offsets, thereby reflecting the rotation of star tracker at different times. The attitude estimation method with a single star spot is developed to realize the multiple attitude updates by a star image, so as to reach a high update rate. The simulation and experiment are performed to verify the proposed approaches. The test results demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective and the attitude update rate of a star tracker is increased significantly.