New Star Pattern Identification with Vector Pattern Matching for Attitude Determination

Abstract

We propose a new star pattern identification algorithm using the vector pattern matching technique on the celestial sphere. The proposed algorithm provides more robust identification performance in cases where the captured star images are biased from the onboard catalog star image positions. The technique is based on the approach of maximizing the target score function, which is formed by the correlation between the original and the reference star patterns on the celestial sphere.