In-orbit Calibration of Attitude Determination Systems for Land-survey Micro-satellites

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary land-survey micro-satellites have general mass up to 100 kg and are placed on the orbit altitudes from 600 up to 800 km. For such spacecraft some principle problems on attitude determination, in-flight calibration and alignment are considered and elaborated methods are presented for their solving. We present discrete algorithms for calibration and alignment of the low cost strap-down inertial navigation systems with correction by signals from multi-head Sun sensor, magnetic sensor and the GPS/GLONASS satellites.