Attitude measurement for spacecraft with high update rate based on the rolling shutter mode of a star tracker

Attitude measurement is necessary for spacecraft in the missions such as earth observation and deep space exploration. A star tracker is a kind of attitude sensors on spacecraft with the highest precision, and the attitude update rate of a star tracker is insufficient with the development of high-resolution earth observation. The attitude measurement for spacecraft with high update rate is proposed in this paper. The rolling shutter (RS) imaging mode of a star tracker is used to acquire star images, and the star spots in the star images are exposed at different times. The attitude measurement with a single star spot is developed for completing the multiple attitude updates by a star image. The experiment results illustrate that the attitude update rate is increased significantly.