Itt Manufacturing Enterprises, Inc.

Exelis Inc.

Paul C Griffith

Donald David Gregory

Kenneth K Ellis

Loren Woody

David Ball

David Edwin Lund

Perry Ramsey

A star sensor includes (a) a scan mirror for scanning at least one star; (b) a detector array, coupled to the scan mirror, for detecting the one star; and (c) a processor, coupled to the detector array. The processor includes a first filter configured to reduce noise spikes in the detected one star, and provide a detection mask of filtered data. Also included is a second filter configured to reduce non-contiguous samples in the detection mask. A centroid calculator is included to determine a location of the one star, after the first and second filtering. The first filter includes a median filter, followed by an averaging filter, both configured to filter the one star in an along-scan direction of the scan mirror. The first filter includes another median filter, which is configured to filter the detected one star in the cross-scan direction of the scan mirror. An adder is included to subtract (a) output data from the other median filter from (b) output data from the averaging filter and provide filtered star data to the second filter.

Star sensing for an earth imaging sensor

An optical imaging system includes a non-gimbaled telescope attached to a platform configured for outer-space orbit. Attached to the platform is a coelostat that is positioned in front of the aperture of the telescope. The coelostat includes two connected mirrors. Mirror one receives light from a scene of interest and mirror two receives light from the first mirror and transfers that light to the aperture of the telescope. The coelostat rotates 360 degrees around the azimuth axis. Additionally, mirror one rotates around the elevational axis to provide the entire system with a large field of regard.

System and method for a coelostat with large field of regard optics

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Fort Wayne, IN, United States of America

Paul C Griffith