Related papers: A software package for evaluating the performance …
We present here a low-cost Raspberry Pi (RPi)-based star sensor StarberrySense using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, developed and built for applications in small satellites and CubeSat-based missions. A star sensor is one of…
Star trackers are primarily optical devices that are used to estimate the attitude of a spacecraft by recognising and tracking star patterns. Currently, most star trackers use conventional optical sensors. In this application paper, we…
The star tracker is generally affected by the atmospheric background light and the aerodynamic environment when working in near space, which results in missing stars or false stars. Moreover, high-speed maneuvering may cause star trailing,…
A pointing accuracy better than 1"(3sigma) star tracker plays a significant role for the advanced scientific missions. This thesis makes a series of studies on the typical error sources associated with the positioning and calibration…
Using actual flight data from a 50-cm-class microsatellite whose mission and operations have already been completed, this study re-evaluates satellite attitude determination performance and the error characteristics of onboard attitude…
This work presents numerical results of a computer simulation performed with six centroiding algorithms targeting a star tracker in development at INPE, including readout noise and considering a Gaussian point spread function. Five of the…
Attitude sensors determine the spacecraft attitude through the sensing of an astronomical object, field or other phenomena. The Sun and fixed stars are the two primary astronomical sensing objects. Attitude sensors are critical components…
We propose a framework for compressive sensing of images with local distinguishable objects, such as stars, and apply it to solve a problem in celestial navigation. Specifically, let x be an N-pixel real-valued image, consisting of a small…
Due to the advancement of nano-satellite technology, CubeSats and fleets of CubeSats can form an alternative to high-cost large-size satellite missions with the advantage of extended spatial coverage. One of these initiatives is the…
Having a need to perform differential photometry for tens of thousands stars in a several square degrees field, we developed Astrokit program. The software corrects the star brightness variations caused by variations of atmospheric…
Most existing star-galaxy classifiers depend on the reduced information from catalogs, necessitating careful data processing and feature extraction. In this study, we employ a supervised machine learning method (GoogLeNet) to automatically…
Pose estimation of an uncooperative space resident object is a key asset towards autonomy in close proximity operations. In this context monocular cameras are a valuable solution because of their low system requirements. However, the…
An attitude determination system for balloon-borne experiments is presented. The system provides pointing information in azimuth and elevation for instruments flying on stratospheric balloons over Antarctica. In-flight attitude is given by…
Accurate and stable spacecraft pointing is a requirement of many astronomical observations. Pointing particularly challenges nanosatellites because of an unfavorable surface area to mass ratio and proportionally large volume required for…
Air-bearing platforms for simulating the rotational dynamics of satellites require highly precise ground truth systems. Unfortunately, commercial motion capture systems used for this scope are complex and expensive. This paper shows a novel…
To determine the precise positions of stars in CCD frames, various centering algorithms have been proposed for astrometry. The effective point spread function (ePSF) and the Gaussian centering algorithms are two representative centering…
We present a generic algorithm for performing astronomical image registration and pointing refinement. The method is based on matching the positions and fluxes of available point sources in image overlap regions. This information is used to…
The preparation of a space-mission that carries out any kind of imaging to detect high-precision low-amplitude variability of its targets requires a robust model for the expected performance of its instruments. This model cannot be derived…
Many algorithms have been proposed to help clinicians evaluate cone density and spacing, as these may be related to the onset of retinal diseases. However, there has been no rigorous comparison of the performance of these algorithms. In…
To achieve mass, power, and cost reduction, there is a trend to reduce the volume of many instruments aboard spacecraft, especially for small spacecraft (cubesats or nanosats) with very limited mass, volume and power budgets. With the…