Kayser-Threde delivered low price star sensor for Argentine micro satellite

Citation

(1999), "Kayser-Threde delivered low price star sensor for Argentine micro satellite", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 71 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1999.12771bab.036

Kayser-Threde delivered low price star sensor for Argentine micro satellite

Kayser-Threde delivered "low price" star sensor for Argentine micro satellite

Keywords Kayser-Threde, Sensors

Kayser-Threde recently delivered its first star sensor flight model to the Argentine space agency. The sensor was designed for autonomous attitude determination of micro satellites and is expected to become a series product. During development, manufacturing and test, the Munich-based space company worked according to the US slogan "faster, cheaper, better". In 1999 the star sensor will be injected into orbit on SAC-C, an earth observation and research satellite, with a US DELTA launcher.

Within only 11 months of the order of the Argentine space agency CoNAE (Comisión Nacionál de Actividades des Espaciales) Kayser-Threde manufactured, tested and delivered the star sensor of the type KM 1301 to its customer.

The sensor is based on a design of the Technical University of Berlin. Kayser-Threde, however, further developed the sensor especially for commercial and national space projects. Owing to purposive "design to cost management" this series product now offers a cost/effect ratio optimized for small satellites.

The sensor uses a CCD-camera which takes and analyses four pictures of the sky per second and analyses them. The sensor's electronics is capable of identifying star patterns based on their characteristic angles and the distances between the stars. Once a sufficient number of stars have been identified, the exact attitude of the sensor and thus of the entire satellite is determined in all three axes by means of a star catalogue. The accuracy is 0.02°. The KM 1301 star sensor is a very compact unit with a size of 168mm × 115mm × 112mm, a mass of only 0.8kg and a power consumption of merely 3W.