LONEStar: The Lunar Flashlight Optical Navigation Experiment

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Krause, Michael, Thrasher, Ava, Soni, Priyal, Smego, Liam, Isaac, Reuben, Nolan, Jennifer, Pledger, Micah, Lightsey, E. Glenn, Ready, W. Jud, Christian, John
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Krause, Michael
Thrasher, Ava
Soni, Priyal
Smego, Liam
Isaac, Reuben
Nolan, Jennifer
Pledger, Micah
Lightsey, E. Glenn
Ready, W. Jud
Christian, John
author_facet Krause, Michael
Thrasher, Ava
Soni, Priyal
Smego, Liam
Isaac, Reuben
Nolan, Jennifer
Pledger, Micah
Lightsey, E. Glenn
Ready, W. Jud
Christian, John
contents This paper documents the results from the highly successful Lunar flashlight Optical Navigation Experiment with a Star tracker (LONEStar). Launched in December 2022, Lunar Flashlight (LF) was a NASA-funded technology demonstration mission. After a propulsion system anomaly prevented capture in lunar orbit, LF was ejected from the Earth-Moon system and into heliocentric space. NASA subsequently transferred ownership of LF to Georgia Tech to conduct an unfunded extended mission to demonstrate further advanced technology objectives, including LONEStar. From August-December 2023, the LONEStar team performed on-orbit calibration of the optical instrument and a number of different OPNAV experiments. This campaign included the processing of nearly 400 images of star fields, Earth and Moon, and four other planets (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). LONEStar provided the first on-orbit demonstrations of heliocentric navigation using only optical observations of planets. Of special note is the successful in-flight demonstration of (1) instantaneous triangulation with simultaneous sightings of two planets with the LOST algorithm and (2) dynamic triangulation with sequential sightings of multiple planets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_12198
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LONEStar: The Lunar Flashlight Optical Navigation Experiment
Krause, Michael
Thrasher, Ava
Soni, Priyal
Smego, Liam
Isaac, Reuben
Nolan, Jennifer
Pledger, Micah
Lightsey, E. Glenn
Ready, W. Jud
Christian, John
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Space Physics
This paper documents the results from the highly successful Lunar flashlight Optical Navigation Experiment with a Star tracker (LONEStar). Launched in December 2022, Lunar Flashlight (LF) was a NASA-funded technology demonstration mission. After a propulsion system anomaly prevented capture in lunar orbit, LF was ejected from the Earth-Moon system and into heliocentric space. NASA subsequently transferred ownership of LF to Georgia Tech to conduct an unfunded extended mission to demonstrate further advanced technology objectives, including LONEStar. From August-December 2023, the LONEStar team performed on-orbit calibration of the optical instrument and a number of different OPNAV experiments. This campaign included the processing of nearly 400 images of star fields, Earth and Moon, and four other planets (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). LONEStar provided the first on-orbit demonstrations of heliocentric navigation using only optical observations of planets. Of special note is the successful in-flight demonstration of (1) instantaneous triangulation with simultaneous sightings of two planets with the LOST algorithm and (2) dynamic triangulation with sequential sightings of multiple planets.
title LONEStar: The Lunar Flashlight Optical Navigation Experiment
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Space Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12198