We have designed and built a testbed demonstrating an angle sensor that measures the relative angular position between two free-flying spacecraft when used in conjunction with a distance-metrology system. In flight, one spacecraft would carry an LED beacon while the other would carry the sensor system. Our fixed, staring testbed sensor demonstrated a 10 degree capture range with 0.1 arcsec resolution over the inner 1 arcmin of field, and an update rate of over 100 Hz. The testbed showed this performance for simulated spacecraft separations of 100 to 1000 meters.
Testbed angle sensor for metrology of multi-spacecraft formations
Advances in Stellar Interferometry ; 2006 ; Orlando,Florida ,United States
Proc. SPIE ; 6268
2006-06-22
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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