A starlight refraction scheme with single star sensor used in autonomous satellite navigation system

• A new scheme used in autonomous satellite navigation system is proposed.
• A method how to calculate the optimal installed angle of star sensor is presented.
• A refraction star identification method using only one stellar sensor is presented.
• The abnormal situations occurred during the experiment are analyzed.

For autonomous satellite navigation, the method based on stellar refraction is studied in this paper. In the previous studies, two star sensors have been used for navigation. Actually, only one star sensor is sufficient for navigation. The additional sensor will result in an extra burden for the initial alignment process and design cost. In this paper, an autonomous satellite navigation scheme based on stellar refraction with a single star sensor is presented. The installed angle of star sensor is closely related with the navigation precision of satellite, and the refraction star identification is crucial in stellar refraction method. Hence the determination of installed angle and refraction star identification are also considered. Finally, to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme, a simulation for low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite is carried out and its result indicates that the proposed method is practical with high-precision.