Generation of Guide Star Catalog for Star Trackers

In this paper, a novel guide star catalog generation algorithm is presented, which is a crucial part of an advanced star tracker design since the performance and reliability of star identification and attitude determination depend on the guide star selection. First, we propose an analytical method to estimate the stellar instrument magnitude and characterize the associated errors. Those stars whose instrument magnitudes are higher than the star tracker sensitivity constitute the original catalog. Then, the probability model of each star in the original catalog for attitude determination is established as the function of the field of view (FOV), the brightness accuracy, and the mean number of stars in FOV based on the brightness and uniformity principles, and the stars with larger probability are selected as guide stars. The accuracy of photometry method is validated by estimating the Hipparcos catalog instrument magnitude and comparing them with actual data. The efficiency of guide star selection algorithm is demonstrated by generating guide star catalog for a star tracker with a 16° × 16° FOV.