Small satellites are capable of performing space explore missions that require accurate attitude determination and control. However, low weight, size, power and cost requirements limit the types of attitude sensor of small craft, such as CCD, are not practical for small satellites. CMOS APS is a good substitute for attitude sensors of small craft. Some of the technical advantages of CMOS APS are no blooming, single power, low power consumption, small size and little support circuitry, direct digital output, simple to system design, in particular, radiation-hard characteristic compare with CCD. This paper discusses the application probability of CMOS APS in star tracker for small satellites, further more, a prototype ground-based star camera based on STAR250 CMOS image sensor has been built. In order to extract stars positions coordinates, subpixel accuracy centroiding algorithm has been developed and tested on some ground-based images. Moreover, the camera system star sensitivity and noise model are analyzed, and the system accuracy is been evaluated. Experimental results indicate that a star camera based on CMOS APS is a viable practical attitude sensor appropriate for space small satellites.


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    Title :

    CMOS APS imaging system application in star tracker


    Contributors:
    Li, Jie (author) / Liu, Jinguo (author) / Li, Xuekui (author) / Liu, Yaxia (author) / Hao, Zhihang (author)

    Conference:

    Advanced Materials and Devices for Sensing and Imaging II ; 2004 ; Beijing,China


    Published in:

    Proc. SPIE ; 5633 ; 536


    Publication date :

    2005-01-20





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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