Development of firmware for nano-satellite star tracker based attitude determination

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, we become more dependent on satellites for functions such as communication, positioning, imaging, and weather. For satellites to perform their tasks effectively, it is important to know the attitudes of the satellites. Hence, the development of a precise and accurate attitude determination method is crucial. Devices such as the star tracker, magnetometer, sun sensor, and the gyroscope are used to determine the attitudes of satellites. Star trackers, however, estimates the attitude of satellites more accurately without any prior information and are therefore used for this project [1]. Since there is a need to find the attitude of satellites, devices such as the star tracker are used which is the main focus of this project. The main objective of this project is to write the algorithms needed to find the attitude of the nanosatellite using the star tracker. This project however does not include the implementation of the algorithms in the hardware of the star tracker The steps that were taken for this project includes the simulation of the star images, finding the centre coordinates of the stars in the simulated image and finally finding the attitude of the nanosatellite through the geometric voting algorithm.