Satellite camera attitude determination and image navigation by means of earth edge and landmark measurement

Abstract

A method and system is disclosed for imaging a celestial object, typically the Earth, with a spacecraft orbiting the celestial object. The method includes steps of (a) operating an imager instrument aboard the spacecraft to generate data representing an image of the celestial object; (b) processing the image data to derive the location of at least one predetermined landmark in the image and a location of edges of the celestial object in the image; and (c) further processing the detected locations to obtain the attitude of the imager instrument. The method includes a further step of outputting the image and the imager instrument attitude to at least one end-user of the image, and/or using the imager instrument attitude to revise the image before outputting the image to the at least one end-user of the image. The generated data preferably represents a one half frame image, and the steps of processing and further processing thus occur at a one half frame rate. The step of processing includes a step of applying the a priori knowledge of the attitude coefficients in processing new observations to determine the imager current attitude.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.