MOON-SUN ATTITUDE SENSOR

The basic ideas and the preliminary feasibility study of an experiment al sensor for spacecraft attitude determination are presented, This in strument, based on a low-cost charge-coupled device camera, is a moon tracker that records its images in tile visible spectrum, The subseque nt image processing enables this sensor to provide redundant data for attitude determination. Up to six different directions and two angles could actually be evaluated. The moon orbit and magnitude, the instrum ent operability, and the data reduction, as well as the attitude deter mination, have been briefly analyzed, The sensor cost is expected to b e low, and its accuracy would increase with the complexity of the moon image processing software.