STARNAV I: STAR TRACKER EXPERIMENT ON THE SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION STS-107

摘要

We report the results of a flight experiment aboard the ill-fated STS-107 Columbia Space Shuttle. Our results were telemetered during the first 10 days of the mission. The main purpose of the experiment was to test an advanced star pattern recognition algorithm. While the overall experiment was a success, we experienced un-anticipated difficulties. Due to the scattered light reflections off the SpaceHab roof, several image frames were not useable. Also, due to non-functioning thermo-electrical cooler, the background noise was higher than anticipated and varied during thermal cycling. However, these challenges were overcome and we report herein successful star identification and attitude determination results using a novel LISA (Lost-In-Space-Algorithm).