Optical Celestial Navigation System for High Mach High Altitude Operation

A navigational sensor system that can maintain an accurate position estimate without relying upon systems such as GPS, Galileo or Glonass is needed for a variety of military applications. Optical Physics Company is proposing to develop a novel passive optical approach to build a modern day celestial navigation system (CNS) composed of (1) a dual-axis star tracker module and (2) a horizon tracker. The concept is based on a straightforward algorithm which locks celestial coordinates to an Earth-centric baseline. The proposed optical CNS will provide frequent updates to a low cost INS (inertial navigation system) which uses the 1 Hz CNS data in a Kalman estimator to provide 3 meter geo-location accuracy. During Phase I, the CNS design matured through four concepts – each one smaller, lighter and less expensive than the previous while maintaining performance. During Phase II a TRL 5 unit will be demonstrated first in the lab, then on a local mountain at 6000 feet, then on Mauna Kea at 14,000 feet. Such a high altitude will have atmospheric profiles within a factor of 2 of flight profiles and allow accurate performance characterization under day, night and sunset/sunrise conditions over weeks of time to account for weather variations.