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 investigate a novel passive optical approach to build a modern day celestial navigation system (CNS) composed of (1) two star tracker modules and (2) a horizon tracker. The concept is elegant and sound, being 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, we will develop an initial opto-mechanical design and perform a high fidelity simulation to evaluate noise and thermal effects. This will be followed by the design, assembly and test of one of the critical components, namely the horizon tracker. The other critical component, the star tracker is being developed under a parallel Phase II effort sponsored by the Air Force. Phase I Option work plan is to develop the Phase II prototype design for the optical CNS.