ИСТИНА

Nano Star Tracker on Chip (STC) is under development by Azmerit ltd. and Sternberg Astronomical Institute of Lomonosov Moscow State University (SAI MSU). This stellar sensor is designed first of all for micro and nano satellites, but can also be used on larger spacecrafts. Its dimensions, which are 73×57×23 mm (or about 30×30×50 mm in another embodiment), its weight, which is less than 65 g, and its average power consumption of 250 mW (1W peak) enable to use it in a CubeSat satellites. The STC offers a set of standard interfaces (RS485, RS232, etc.) and accepts input voltages of 3.3 V to 5 V. The features of STC are: 1) focus mainly on the Russian market of small satellites, thus it is assumed to use mostly the Russian electronic components while manufacturing, 2) STC has a high attitude accuracy, which is achieved through a more complicated image processing, allowing of taking into account the systematic errors. It is expected that the use of CMOS photo sensor with size of 128×128 pixels and with an update rate of 10 Hz gives the attitude error σXY=10". For a sensor of 768×768 pixels size error drops to σXY=1". Attitude accuracy improvement technique was developed in the SAI MSU. Azmerit ltd. is engaged in the manufacture and commercialization of STC.