Fast Angular Rate Miniature Star Tracker

AeroAstro proposes to leverage its existing innovative miniature star-tracker design to develop an improved star tracker that provides both spacecraft attitude and angular rate information. The resulting system will have minimal cost and impact to spacecraft resources and can easily handle typical spacecraft tumble conditions and provide for recovery from a lost-in-space (LIS) condition. AeroAstro along with MIT has been developing a miniature low cost star, known as MST, is a shift away from the industry trend of increasing star tracker attitude determination accuracy to the exclusion of all other performance metrics. MST provides good performance with respect to speed of pattern recognition, field of view, star catalog size and accuracy while simultaneously reducing mass, size, complexity, and cost. This SBIR Phase II effort will enhance MST with the ability to perform a lost-in-space initialization, and the ability to provide meaningful information during high angular rate motion. Additionally, in recognition of the trend towards more modular and standardized Spacecraft systems, the MST star tracker will be given a standard USB interface for command and telemetry. The resulting system, FAR-MST, will provide a complete low-cost, low-power attitude determination solution ideal for small, rapid-response low earth orbit satellites.