A Study on Attitude Estimation for Small Satellite by Lunar Outline Extraction

Abstract

In this paper, an attitude angle detection system for a small satellite at eclipse is constructed. Recently, a small satellite mission is applied to various fields, and a small satellite mission at eclipse is planned. Then it is necessary that such a small satellite keeps controlling the attitude for eclipse. In this paper, the authors propose a moon outline extraction method to detect the attitude angle for eclipse instead of equipping a star tracker and a sun sensor. The moon outline extraction captured from the satellite is used to detect the solar direction, and then the attitude angle is detected by analyzing the solar direction. Moreover to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper, substitution experiment on ground is executed, and the result is estimated.

Keywords

• attitude detection system
• small satellite
• lunar outline