Abstract
The low frequency errors (LFE) of star trackers are the most penalizing errors for high-accuracy satellite attitude determination. Two test star trackers- have been mounted on the Space Technology Experiment and Climate Exploration (STECE) satellite, a small satellite mission developed by China. To extract and compensate the LFE of the attitude measurements for the two test star trackers, a new approach, called Fourier analysis, combined with the Vondrak filter method (FAVF) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the LFE of the two test star trackers’ attitude measurements are analyzed and extracted by the FAVF method. The remarkable orbital reproducibility features are found in both of the two test star trackers’ attitude measurements. Then, by using the reproducibility feature of the LFE, the two star trackers’ LFE patterns are estimated effectively. Finally, based on the actual LFE pattern results, this paper presents a new LFE compensation strategy. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed LFE compensation algorithm is demonstrated by the significant improvement in the consistency between the two test star trackers. The root mean square (RMS) of the relative Euler angle residuals are reduced from [27.95′′, 25.14′′, 82.43′′], 3σ to [16.12′′, 15.89′′, 53.27′′], 3σ.
Highlights
High precision attitude determination is very important for many satellite missions [1,2].The extended Kalman filter (EKF) has been widely used in high precision attitude determination systems consisting of star trackers and rate gyros in the past few decades [3]
There are mainly two kinds of star trackers, those based on charge coupled device (CCD) detectors, and those based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor (APS) detectors [6]
When the attitude data set is long, selecting an appropriate polynomial degree is difficult, because the star tracker low frequency errors (LFE) vary periodically with the satellite orbit, and we need to analyze the attitude data for several consecutive satellite revolutions
Summary
High precision attitude determination is very important for many satellite missions [1,2]. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) has been widely used in high precision attitude determination systems consisting of star trackers and rate gyros in the past few decades [3]. Star trackers are optical sensors which measure the angles between stars in order to determine the absolute 3-axes attitude. Star trackers typically yield accuracies an order of magnitude better than other attitude sensors such as an infrared earth sensor, sun sensor and magnetometer, etc. There are mainly two kinds of star trackers, those based on charge coupled device (CCD) detectors, and those based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor (APS) detectors [6]. To boost the technology development of the star trackers, a new CCD based star tracker (CCD01) and a new CMOS APS based star tracker (APS01) have been loaded on the Space Technology Experiment and Climate Exploration (STECE) satellite as the test payloads
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