Compact Guide Star Sensor for Precision Inertial Alignment

This CIF project will build on past internal technology development efforts to develop a compact optical sensor head package for performing precision inertial alignment. The sensor system will track a single guide star will a goal of 40 milli arc sec resolution ior proposed small to mid-size science platforms. This inertial sensor concept will have reduced Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) an order of magnitude better that current state-of-art star tracker technologies, with the potential to achieve performance well beyond diffraction limited optics. This design concept is scalable, thus also providing a new technology to advance the state-of the-art in SmallSat inertial attitude measurement. Preliminary feasibility was previously demonstrated with a single-axis bench-top concept prototype, but at this point the TRL is low. During FY19 the plan is to develop a fully functional ( two axis) prototype and coduct more extensive perfroamnce characterization testing. This technology is enabling for precision spacecraft formation flying at the sub arc-sec level. Additionally, this guide star inertial sensor technology can improve virtual telescope (VT) transverse alignment system performance by more than an order-of-magnitude. This would provide capability to perform imaging at milli-arc levels, a goal of the SHARPI science team.

Precision co-navigating spacecraft have numerous applications. Such dual or multi-spacecraft will require advances in precision inertial sensors since many of the proposed science and/or technology demonstration missions are aiming to preform inertial alignment beyond the state-of-the-art levels for precision formation flying. Additionally, with the increasing interest in Cubesat and Smallsat tmissions, precision navigation equipment with reduced mass and volume is needed. NASA seeks to develop a new class of science instruments using separated spacecraft to form a long focal length “virtual” telescope for high energy imaging applications in Astrophysics (1km-1000km) and Heliophysics (40m-500m), using Precision Formation Flying (PFF) technology. Dual-spacecraft PFF requires advances in precision inertial sensors since many of the proposed science and/or technology demonstration missions require inertial alignment beyond the state-of-the-art of commercially available systems. The CGSS has potential to reduce Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) an order of magnitude better than state-of-art star tracker technologies of similar performance levels, providing a compact device for proposed small to mid-size science platforms. This design concept is scalable, thus also providing a new technology to advance the state-of-the-art in SmallSat inertial attitude measurement.

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