A Method to Improve Attitude Measurement Accuracy with Multi-FOV Star Sensor

Affected by the space environment, the relative installation errors among optical heads of multi-head star sensor vary periodically in-orbit, which directly affects the accuracy of fusion. A method is proposed to improve the attitude measurement accuracy of multi-FOV star sensors. The star vector error is used as the observation to estimate and compensate the installation matrix error between two optical heads in real time. Based on star vector error characteristics, the installation error estimation parameters are corrected to improve the accuracy of matrix estimation. A multi-field star selection strategy is designed and adopted to select high-quality stars for fusion attitude calculation.Ground simulation and in-orbit application results show that the method can achieve the same accuracy of the three-axis attitude. The accuracy is improved by more than 30% compared with the single head.

A study was conducted on the attitude calculation method of multi probe star sensors after fusion of multiple probes, and a method was proposed to improve the attitude measurement accuracy of multi probe star sensors. This method uses star point information as the installation matrix between observation and estimation probes, effectively improving the estimation accuracy of the installation matrix, At the same time, the attitude measurement accuracy of the star sensor is further improved by combining the multi field of view star selection strategy. According to ground simulation and in orbit application results, the proposed fusion attitude calculation method is reasonable and effective, with an accuracy improvement of over 30% compared to a single head, and has certain engineering application value.