Automatic forward motion compensation for micro satellites

Author

Mouton, Chris J. ; Du Plessis, Jan J. ; Schoonwinkel, Arnold

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Stellenbosch Univ., South Africa

Volume

1

fYear

2002

fDate

2-4 Oct. 2002

Firstpage

7

Abstract

South Africa´s first micro satellite, SUNSAT, was operational in orbit for 23 months since its NASA-sponsored launch on February 23, 1999. SUNSAT is a graduate student-developed satellite from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Research work is in progress on improving SUNSAT´s imager from 15 m to 2.5 m resolution. This will require the use of forward motion compensation for exposure control. This paper presents automatic forward motion compensation (FMC) for micro satellites using a exciting new Earth sensor that measures the boresight´s projection speed on the earth directly with no drift by making use of a series of images. High-resolution imagers will be controlled by this technique to ensure high quality stereo images.

Keywords

image resolution; motion compensation; satellite communication; stereo image processing; Earth sensor; Fourier transform; NASA; SUNSAT; South Africa; University of Stellenbosch; automatic forward motion compensation; boresight projection speed measurement; exposure control; high-resolution imagers; image resolution; micro satellites; stereo images; Africa; Automatic control; Earth; Extraterrestrial measurements; Image resolution; Image sensors; Motion compensation; Motion control; Motion measurement; Satellites;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Africon Conference in Africa, 2002. IEEE AFRICON. 6th

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7570-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AFRCON.2002.1146797

Filename

1146797