Spacecraft Optical Navigation

Book excerpt: UNIQUE RESOURCE EXPLORING HOW SPACECRAFT IMAGERY PROVIDES PROFESSIONALS WITH ACCURATE ESTIMATES OF SPACECRAFT TRAJECTORY, WITH REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES AND DETAILED ILLUSTRATIONS Spacecraft Optical Navigation provides detailed information on the planning and analysis of spacecraft imagery to help determine the trajectory of a spacecraft. The author, an experienced engineer within the field, addresses the entirety of celestial targets and explains how a spacecraft captures their imagery. Aimed at professionals within spacecraft navigation, this book provides an extensive introduction and explains the history of optical navigation, reviewing a range of optical methods and presents real world examples throughout. With the use of mathematics, this book discusses everything from the orbits, sizes, and shapes of the bodies being imaged, to the location and properties of salient features on their surfaces. Specific sample topics covered in Spacecraft Optical Navigation include: History of various past spacecraft, including Mariner and Viking, Voyager, Galileo, NEAR Shoemaker, and Cassini, and flight hardware, star catalogs, and stereophotoclinometry Cameras, covering the gnomonic projection (and deviations from it), creation of a digital picture, picture flattening, and readout smears Modeling optical navigation observables, covering apparent directions to an object, star, and limbs or terminators, and orientation of cameras Obtaining optical navigation observables, covering centerfinding for stars and resolved and unresolved bodies, and using opnav data in orbit determination Spacecraft Optical Navigation is an ideal resource for engineers working in spacecraft navigation and optical navigation, to update their knowledge of the technology and use it in their day-to-day. The text will also benefit researchers working with spacecraft, particularly in navigation, and professors and lecturers teaching graduate aerospace courses.