Browsing by Author "Kühl, Christopher T. F."

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    Combined earth- /star sensor for attitude and orbit determination of geostationary satellites
    (2005) Kühl, Christopher T. F.; Well, Klaus H. (Professor, Ph.D.)
    The subject of this work is a sensor for autonomous attitude and orbit determination of satellites, based on active pixel technology as it has been proposed in the patent on a Combined Earth-/ Star-Sensor System and Method for Determining the Orbit and Position of Spacecraft developed at Daimler-Chrysler (H. Diehl; W. Platz; H. Zinner; E. Gottzein; „Kombinierter Erd-Sternsensor für gleichzeitige Bahn-und Lagebestimmung“). The sensor covers a wide range of applications, ranging from Low Earth-Orbits (LEO) over GEO Transfer-Orbits (GTO) to Geostationary Earth-Orbits (GEO). The system is characterized by two non-collinear lines-of-sight, which are combined by a beam splitter which as well provides attenuation of the Earth's magnitude. Hereby images of a Star-field, perpendicular to the Earth vector, and the Earth are projected on a single focal plane thereby merging the functionalities of a Star-sensor and an Earth-sensor in a single instrument. The use of such a sensor combination facilitates the determination of a satellite's attitude as well as its position relative to the Earth. Goal of this work is the development and evaluation of the algorithms necessary for determination of attitude, position and orbit, the setup of a prototype and a laboratory test-environment for verification of the system's feasibility and performance. Particular support for the system's feasibility in LEO was given by a successful flight experiment of a functional model of the proposed sensor on the Italian technology-satellite MITA. The validation for GEO was performed using images provided by METEOSAT. The flight data is supplemented by field- and laboratory- experiments.