AUTONOMOUS STAR TRACKER DEVELOPMENT AND QUALIFICATION FOR THE NEW HORIZONS MISSION

摘要

The New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, scheduled for launch in early 2006, is currently being integrated at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The spacecraft design requires a star tracker that operates autonomously both in a standard "staring" mode and in a spin stabilized mode. Under contract to APL, Galileo Avionica redesigned the software for their A-STR star tracker to use time-delayed integration techniques (TDI) to provide autonomous spacecraft attitude estimates at 10 Hz. and at spacecraft body rates up to 10 RPM. Development and testing are complete and the hardware was delivered in July 2004. This paper presents an overview of the mission and the design considerations and operating modes for the modified A-STR tracker, as well as expected accuracy performance and test results.