Abstract
A highly-precise electro-optical system has been developed which could allow a rotating space vehicle to detect stars and, thereby, automatically update its attitude. Featuring a uniquely stable optical system and complete redundancy, with the exception of the telescope itself, the Bendix Star Sensor Assembly (SSA) detects stars of +4 magnitude and brighter within +5 sec, for a rather wide dynamic range of angular rates. (This accuracy can be further increased by limiting the magnitude or angular rate ranges, as could certainly be done for many pointing control system applications.) As stars pass through one of several slits located in the focal plane of the telescope, they are detected by a photo-multiplier tube whose output, in turn, is amplified, converted to TTL logic and fed to a pre-programmed processor. This paper describes the SSA, summarizes its performance capabilities and attempts to give some insight into the processor algorithm design rationale.
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