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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 93 - Colorado Springs - March 2004
Agenda Location	6 SUBCOMMITTEE B – MISSILES AND SPACE VEHICLES 6.2 The StarNav I Experiment Aboard the STS-107 Columbia Space Shuttle
Title	The StarNav I Experiment Aboard the STS-107 Columbia Space Shuttle
Presenter	John Junkins
Affiliation	Texas A&M University
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	A star sensor and autonomous spacecraft attitude navigation technology is described. The StarNav approach is to integrate advanced hardware, image processing, and autonomous intelligent systems concepts to realize a new level of precision and reliability in attitude determination. At the heart of the StarNav algorithms is a novel algorithm that solves the “lost in space” problem (no prior information) by identifying randomly imaged star patterns in near real time, with a theoretical frequency of miss-match of about one in 1029. The star identification process requires only a small fraction of a second and is therefore suitable for on-board, real-time utilization. The StarNav I experiment was flown aboard the Columbia STS-107 mission. While the tragic loss of life and the Columbia vehicle meant that the StarNav I hardware and hard drive were not recovered, sufficient information was transmitted via telemetry during the mission to provide complete on-orbit validation of the algorithms. These results from the Columbia mission are discussed in the presentation. Also discussed is a novel split field of view optical hardware design that images two orthogonal starfields onto a common focal plane to provide three-axis attitude estimation accurate to 5 micro-radians. This hardware design is the basis for the StarNav II hardware that has been adopted for the New Millennium spacecraft EO-3 scheduled for a 2008 launch. The StarNav II sensor has several other novel hardware and software features that are discussed in the presentation, along with extensive night sky experiments to validate the hardware and software.