Quick star tracking algorithm for star sensor based on matching

The principle of matching based on star centroid was introduced. A star tracking algorithm for star sensor based on matching was also presented. The field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology was adopted to acquire real-time star centroid. The bottleneck of image data acquisition in star tracking was solved, the number of tracking star was increased and the speed of star tracking was improved. Sorting and matching method was applied in the tracking algorithm which reduced meaningless matching between stars. The simulation results show that the matching time is reduced to 10% of the past method, the speed of tracking is improved and the whole efficiency of star sensor is also improved obviously.