Study on the fast optimal direction determination for missile-borne star sensor

To ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of missile-borne star sensor for attitude determination, its optical axis direction must be adjusted in real time to avoid the stray light effectively and obtain star image with high-quality. In this paper, a fast optimal direction determination method that can be applied online in engineering is studied. Take the range of missile maneuver into consider, the proposed method solves the optimal direction of optical axis which can make star sensor obtain the best star image for star identification within the visible sky that avoids stray light. In the optical axis optimization model established, for a star sensor with given specification, the optimization indexes include the stars number and their mean magnitude of a star image obtained at a given direction, the control cost to reach the optimal direction from current status. The constraints include invisible sky, stray light etc. For such a complex nonlinear optimization problem without analytical solutions, the combination of enumeration method and table look-up method is employed to obtain solution rapidly for engineering applications. The stray light model is validated by comparing the simulation results with Satellite Tool Kit (STK). Simulation results show that the optimal direction determined by the proposed method can significantly improve the star image's quality and the optimization speed is fast enough to meet the requirement of online applications.