star sensor star pattern recognition（星传感器星模式识别）.docVIP

Star Sensor: Star Pattern Recognition Charly Hermanson and William McMahan Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Clemson University Clemson, SC 29634 cspanit, wmcmaha@ Abstract – Star sensors are attractive as attitude sensors for sounding rockets because of their potential to reduce operational costs. Star sensors consist of a CCD camera and an onboard computer. This package is used to perform star image acquisition, star identification, and camera orientation and provides attitude information. This paper documents an investigation in implementing an algorithm to calibrate such a star sensor by analyzing an initial star image and correlating it with an empirical star image generated from a star catalog. Introduction Sounding rockets (sub-orbital unmanned launch vehicles) are an important tool for use in high altitude, upper atmospheric research. Currently, the in-flight guidance system of these launch vehicles is the Attitude Control System (ACS). The ACS guides the launch vehicle about a pre-programmed path using a sensor package may that include: magnetometers, 3-axis rate sensors, single axis rate gyros, and the Miniature Inertial Digital Attitude System (MIDAS) platform. Unfortunately, these devices are high cost and can be unreliable. Often these sensor devices cannot be reused after flight, adding to the operational costs of the sounding rockets. The high-cost of this sensor package has led to a proposal to develop a CCD star sensor guidance system to reduce system costs and increase ACS reliability for night time launch experiments. This paper describes the first step in developing such a star sensor launch vehicle guidance system. Star sensors consist of a CCD camera and an onboard computer used for image processing. Advances in computer technology have made processors that are capable of performing digital image processing algorithms readily available in small packages at a reasonable cost. The star sensor components are particu