AN APPROACH TO STAR TRACKER ONLY ATTITUDE AND RATE ESTIMATION USING MOTION BLUR

Attitude determination is one of the most fundamental processes that occur during a mission. Many different types of attitude sensors exist to satisfy a broad range of mission-specific pointing requirements. Star trackers lie on the upper end of this spectrum. Although they provide attitude accuracy on the order of arcseconds, they have drawbacks when its comes to availability. Various attitude estimators can be used to propagate attitude during starless periods but without any measurements these estimates degrade quickly. This paper describes an approach to acquire angular rate information directly from the shape of imaged stars. The aim of this study is to improve the performance of a star tracker only attitude determination system.