SpeedStar: A Plug and Play Stellar Gyroscope for Responsive Spacecraft

StarVision Technologies proposes an innovative concept to significantly reduce cost and increase flexibility of tactical satellites. By employing the stellar gyroscope, we replace separate attitude and rate sensing instruments with a single device that is capable of measuring spacecraft inertial rates and attitude by observing the celestial reference - the stars. The SpeedStar innovations allow a star tracker instrument to operate at update rates greater than 100 Hz, providing a tactical spacecraft with inertial rates and attitude at low cost without sacrificing the accuracy of conventional star tracker/gyro systems. The Phase I tasks will result in a hardware test bed to measure the performance and verify the feasibility of the concept.