Image-based attitude propagation for small satellites using RANSAC

This work develops a star-based attitude propagator that uses relative motion of stars in an imager's field of view to infer the motion of a satellite by calculating relative attitude estimates in three degrees of freedom. Algorithms to perform the star detection, correspondence using the random sample consensus (RANSAC), and attitude propagation are presented. The work presented here overviews the approach, describes the developed algorithms, evaluates experimental results, and offers component selection for a CubeSat imaging system.