Automatic forward motion compensation for micro satellites

South Africa's first micro satellite, SUNSAT, was operational in orbit for 23 months since its NASA-sponsored launch on February 23, 1999. SUNSAT is a graduate student-developed satellite from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Research work is in progress on improving SUNSAT's imager from 15 m to 2.5 m resolution. This will require the use of forward motion compensation for exposure control. This paper presents automatic forward motion compensation (FMC) for micro satellites using a exciting new Earth sensor that measures the boresight's projection speed on the earth directly with no drift by making use of a series of images. High-resolution imagers will be controlled by this technique to ensure high quality stereo images.