Preliminary Calibration Results For a High-Precision CMOS Sun Sensor

This paper describes a high-precision, miniature sun sensor under development at the University of Naples. The sensor is one of the innovative technology payloads that will be tested on board the Italian Space Agency micro-satellite platform, scheduled for flight in 2011. The sensor exploits sun images on the focal plane and neural networks to produce sun line measurements with high accuracy and precision. Precision is drastically improved by a novel sensor concept in which multiple sun images produced by a multi-hole mask are simultaneously processed. The paper describes the sensor prototype design and development as well as the calibration procedure and algorithms used to exploit the multiple sun images. Preliminary laboratory tests show that the sensor can provide average accuracy better than 1 arcminute and average precision of the order of 1 arcsecond.