Star Sensor Relative Accuracy Measurement in Night Sky

In this paper, an accurate computational method is proposed to measure the relative accuracy of the star sensor, which does not require complex laboratory instruments. The proposed method uses the direct observation of the night sky along with the exact equations of motions of the Earth and stars to measure the accuracy of the star sensors in the order of 1 arcsecond. The Classical Laboratory Measurement Procedures of the star sensor’s accuracy requires at least a sky simulator along with some auxiliary tools such as a collimator, an accurate 3 DOF Rotary table, an exact alignment instruments, and so on. The classical procedure, in addition of being complex and time-consuming, is costly, and the auxiliary tools also increase the measurement error by themselves. Identifying and eliminating these errors are more difficult process. The proposed procedure is more accurate and more reliable because the sensor is tested in its actual operating environment, i.e., the sky, rather than the simulated laboratory environment.