Analysis and calibration of star sensor's image plane displacement

TL;DR

This paper models and calibrates the six-degree-of-freedom displacement of star sensor's image plane, including drift, incline, and rotation, using an Extended Kalman Filter to improve measurement accuracy in space.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive six-degree-of-freedom displacement model and an on-orbit calibration method for star sensors, addressing limitations of previous models.

Findings

Calibration improves star sensor accuracy to 0.23''

The six-degree-of-freedom model effectively captures all displacements

On-orbit calibration using EKF is feasible and effective

Abstract

Star sensor's image plane can have three kinds of displacement after a long time working in space, and the displacements are the principal point drift, incline displacement and rotation displacement. These displacements can severely decrease star sensor's measuring accuracy, therefore it's necessary to analyze and calibrate them. The previous researches have only considered the principal point drift of image plane, which is three-degree-of-freedom. In contrast, the image plane displacements under the rest three degrees of freedom, that are the incline displacement and the rotation displacement, have been modeled in this paper. These two kinds of displacement's influences on star sensor's accuracy have been analyzed. And the necessity to calibrate them has been pointed out. At last, the Extended Kalman Filter has been used to on-orbit calibrate the six-degree-of-freedom image plane displacement. And the simulation results reveal that the on-orbit calibration algorithm can effectively calibrate the image plane displacement of star sensor. The measuring accuracy of star sensor has been increased to 0.23'' after the calibration. Therefore the new six-degree-of-freedom image plane displacement model has made up the deficiency of the conventional displacement model and enhance the performance of star sensor greatly.