Abstract

Advanced stellar sensors of the future will provide precision attitude reference on spaceborne platforms and will be small, lightweight and highly reliable thanks to the rapid evolution of charge transfer device (CTD) detector technology. The world's first CTD star sensor was built by Perkin-Elmer in 1978. The broad spectral response, high quantum efficiency and self-scanned architecture of these relatively low cost detectors ideally suits them for application to subarc-second attitude reference and attitude transfer systems. The CTD sensor systems in this paper are addressed from a user's viewpoint, stressing the performance potential of these sensors as star trackers and attitude transfer systems. Sensor performance limitations are discussed. A discussion of a next generation star tracker, currently in breadboard testing at Perkin-Elmer, is presented in depth.