Daytime Electronic Stellar Imaging

"The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the best navigation system for worldwide, day-and-night position determination. However, GPS depends on man-made components such as satellites and transmitters. Therefore, it is vulnerable to hostile attack andjamming. The Automated Celestial Navigation (ASN) system would provide an independent alternative to GPS in the case of GPS denial. We propose to design, build, and demonstrate a novel, inexpensive, strapdown, fully automated star tracker for imagingindividual stars both day and night with angular resolution less than 3 arcsec and a field-of view of 3 degrees aboard a surface ship. During Phase I we will determine the sensor optical requirements, develop and test the contrast enhancement and noisereduction algorithm, evaluate the sensor performance and production cost, perform the trade-off studies, and select an optimal design approach. We expect the performance analysis and trade-off studies will be completed, the contrast enhancement algorithmwill be developed and tested, and optimal design approach will be selected. This effort will validate a feasibility of the proposed daytime stellar tracker, which will provide an instantaneous determination of the ship attitude with respect to thecelestial reference frame both day and night, and thus further enhance navigation capability for the U.S. Navy. The proposed development of a daytime electronic stellar tracker has both military and