An On-Orbit Calibration Method of Star Sensor Based on Angular Distance Subtraction

Star sensor needs real-time calibration to improve its navigation accuracy. Compared with other parameters, the position of the principal point is more easily affected by the measurement error, which leads to low calibration accuracy. Conventional star sensors on-orbit calibration methods mainly rely on the angular distance(AD) between stars. The observability of the principal point in this method and the calibration accuracy is not as well as that of other parameters. In this paper, an on-orbit calibration method of star sensor based on the angular distance subtraction(ADS) is proposed. The accuracy of the on-orbit calibration is improved by increasing the observability of the principal point in the calibration process, and the feasibility of this method is verified by the observability analysis. Finally, improved angular distance subtraction(IADS) models are proposed to solve the time-consuming problem of ADS method. In order to demonstrate the performance of the IADS models, simulation calibrations are conducted. The results show that the accuracy of
u₀
and
v₀
of the IADS method is 62.7% and 15.9% higher than that of AD method when other parameters are set as nominal values. The calibration accuracy of the principal point is improved effectively.