Design and development of the Ball Aerospace Flexible Space Camera FSC-701

This paper describes the design and development of Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. (BATC) newest addition to its long line of high reliability, flight proven small aperture sensors. The Flexible Space Camera (FSC-701), developed under a BATC Independent Research and Development project, is designed to meet the on-orbit needs of multiple customers including those seeking solutions for stellar attitude determination, space situational awareness, proximity operations, optical navigation, metrology, optical remote sensing, or all of the above. The FSC-701 uses a distributed architecture consisting of a Camera Electronics Unit (CEU) which interfaces with up to 2 Optical Heads (OH). The distributed architecture allows for maximum design flexibility required to meet spacecraft mission performance and reliability requirements. The design also introduces new capability including variable integration windowing, high rate operation, picture mode, rapid lost in space solutions and many others.