Precession–nutation correction for star tracker
attitude measurement of STECE satellite
Lai Yuwang
a
, Liu Junhong
a
, Ding Yonghe
b
, Gu Defeng
a
, Yi Dongyun
a,
*
a
Department of Mathematics and Systems Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
b
Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunication Technology, Beijing 100094, China
Received 18 March 2013; revised 24 July 2013; accepted 8 October 2013
Available online 2 January 2014
KEYWORDS
Attitude determination;
Low-frequency periodic
error;
Precession–nutation;
Star trackers;
STECE satellite
Abstract Space Technology Experiment and Climate Exploration (STECE) is a small satellite mis-
sion of China for space technology experiment and climate exploration. A new test star tracker and
one ASTRO 10 star tracker have been loaded on the STECE satellite to test the new star tracker’s
measurement performance. However, there is no autonomous precession–nutation correction func-
tion for the test star tracker, which causes an apparent periodic deflection in the inter-boresight
angle between the two star trackers with respect to each other of up to ±500 arcsec, so the preces-
sion and nutation effect needs to be considered while assessing the test star tracker. This paper
researches on the precession–nutation correction for the test star tracker’s attitude measurement
and presents a precession–nutation correction method based on attitude quaternion data. The peri-
odic deflection of the inter-boresight angle between the two star trackers has been greatly eliminated
after the precession and nutation of the test star tracker’s attitude data have been corrected by the
proposed method and the validity of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated. The in-flight
accuracy of the test star tracker has been assessed like attitude noise and low-frequency errors after
the precession–nutation correction.
ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA.
1. Introduction
Due to the rapid development of aerospace industry, it puts
forward drastically increasing requirements for the accuracy
of satellite attitude determination. Star tracker is one of the
most important satellite attitude sensors which can provide
the absolute 3-axis attitude of a satellite utilizing star observa-
tions.
1,2
It is widely used in satellite attitude determination sys-
tems (ADS) and autonomous attitude control systems (ACS).
A star tracker is an optical device which incessantly observes a
portion of the sky, selects the stars in its field of view (FOV),
and then sends the stars information to the star-identification
process. The process identifies the readings from the guide star
catalog and attitude-determination process determines the ex-
act attitude of the star tracker by using the star observation
vectors and the star reference vectors.
3,4
The output of the star
tracker is a quaternion vector that relates the attitude in the
sensor body coordinate frame with respect to the earth cen-
tered inertial coordinate frame. According to the mounted atti-
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 731 84573206.
E-mail addresses: laiyuwangchina@163.com (Y. Lai), gudefeng05@
163.com (D. Gu), dongyunyi@nudt.edu.cn (D. Yi).
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2014),27(1): 117–123
Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics
& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
cja@buaa.edu.cn
www.sciencedirect.com
1000-9361 ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2013.12.016
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.