High-Fidelity Measurement Models for Optical Spacecraft Navigation

J.A. Christian, E.G. Lightsey

Abstract: Autonomous spacecraft navigation is a topic of growing importance for human and robotic space exploration missions. Of particular interest for these applications is the ability of a spacecraft to navigate without requiring any interaction with Earth-based resources. After considering numerous competing alternatives, optical navigation techniques appear to be among the most promising methods for autonomous spacecraft navigation in a planetary system. A detailed discussion of optical sensor hardware and errors sources is presented and leads to new high- delity math models for optical sensor performance that may be used in navigation simulations. These models are then used to develop a detailed representation of the covariance for an optical line-of-sight measurement in terms of camera hardware properties. As an example case study, the usefulness of this new measurement model is demonstrated through the analysis of a star tracker for attitude determination.
Published in: Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009)
September 22 - 25, 2009
Savannah International Convention Center
Savannah, GA
Pages: 1486 - 1503
Cite this article: Christian, J.A., Lightsey, E.G., "High-Fidelity Measurement Models for Optical Spacecraft Navigation," Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), Savannah, GA, September 2009, pp. 1486-1503.
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