Lionel Oddos-Marcel, Sodern
Gregory BENICOURT, Sales Manager, SODERN
Since February 2019, Sodern’s Auriga star tracker reached TRL9 as part of the successful launch of the first six satellites of the OneWeb constellation. This CMOS multi-head star tracker is now the reference in the market with more than 1300 Optical Heads in-flight cumulating 30 million of hours without failure. On the strength of this success, Sodern improves and expands its offer with new developments and features. This paper presents these new offers in the Auriga product line.
The Optical Head initially developed for the LEO OneWeb constellation has been hardened using rad-hard glasses and thicker structure in order to be compatible with 15 years GEO orbit: this qualified Auriga V2 replaces now the first version while keeping the same interfaces except a mass increase of less than 10%. An option for a 26° baffle is now also available to facilitate accommodation on satellite.
The Auriga software library includes now the option to use gyro angular rate input, when available on board the satellite, merged with stars information in a double coupling: a first coupling inside star tracker algorithm to dramatically improve its robustness and a second coupling at attitude level with Kalman filter to reach 100% availability with enhanced performances. The software is fully upscalable to adapt with any gyro performances and customer needs.