Star Tracker Small Satellite

The system occupies a unique niche abovesun sensors in capability but below ccd based star trackers in cost and system impacts.

Star tracker small satellite. Nst 3 nano star tracker 30 000 the nst 3 is an advanced nano star tracker based on nst 4 with a smaller baffle lower weights 165g for compact working conditions. A star tracker is an optical device that measures the positions of stars using photocells or a camera. The significant size reduction is enabled by the sionyx xqe 0920 sensor which offers dramatically improved visible and near infrared sensitivity in. Wide angle nightscapes and milky way panoramas are the star trackers strong point.

As the positions of many stars have been measured by astronomers to a high degree of accuracy a star tracker on a satellite or spacecraft may be used to determine the orientation or attitude of the spacecraft with respect to the stars in order to do this the star tracker must obtain an. These 60 satellites initially fly in a chain formation but over time. The st200 one of the world s smallest and lightest fully autonomous low power star trackers aimed at applications in pico and nano satellite platforms. We design fabricate and test our products in a dedicated facility in boulder co.

Each of the satellites has two star trackers which are many times smaller than commercially available alternatives. These types of projects usually involve traveling to a remote location where. With an accuracy of 30 arcseconds and an extremely small physical footprint the st200 can be. In august 2019 two 1 5u aerocube 10 satellites built by the aerospace corporation were deployed from a cygnus resupply spacecraft.

Starlink is launched in groups of 60 satellites per launch. The star tracker category includes small eq mounts that can carry a camera and lens combo whether it s for wide angle milky way photography or deep sky imaging with a telephoto lens. That way when you see the first satellite in a chain the rest will follow behind in that chain. The star tracker we developed for nasa s chandra x ray observatory led to our high accuracy star trackers hast the highest accuracy of any star tracker ever flown on a space system.

Ball has more than 40 years of experience developing high performance star trackers to support civil commercial and defense missions. Used in civil commercial and defense satellite systems ball star trackers deliver the best performance in the industry. The small satellite and maneuverable space vehicle communities have been seeking a component such as this for years and commercialization of this product is expectedto be received very positively. The star tracker is a lot more complicated in that it uses the entire star field pattern to provide attitude knowledge or in the laymen s term more of the direction in which the spacecraft is pointing while it is orbiting the earth or doing wherever its science mission requires it to do.

Hyperion technologies and berlin space technologies offer two star tracker models designed for varying mission demands and satellite sizes.