A miniaturised sensor for satellite attitude and orbital determination

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We propose to develop a miniaturised sensor with mass less than 400 g that is able to determine spacecraft orientation, motion and orbit location for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications. The sensor will acquire and maintain a four-dimensional attitude quaternion and time derivative using inertial gyro and rate sensors and camera images of the surrounding space to determine uniquely orientation. It will also utilise timing signals broadcast by global positioning spacecraft including the GPS network in order to derive a geospatial location and velocity with respect to Earth. The sensor will estimate high-precision expected mean values of these parameters as they evolve in time using a fourteen-dimensional stochastic state estimator that predicts the spacecraft attitude and broadcasts this information via serial data stream to the spacecraft bus. We propose further to utilise an Earth-motion model in our attitude estimator to provide the first mechatronic device to provide attitude-coordinate predictions with respect to either solar system or Earth-based reference frames as well as predict solar, Lunar and Earth location. Our star-camera research will also examine additional information that may be extracted from motion blur in camera images.