Estimate of accuracy of determining the orientation of the star sensor system according to the experimental data

The BOKZ-M60 star sensor (Unit for Measuring Star Coordinates) is intended for determining the parameters of the orientation of the axes of the intrinsic coordinate system relative to the axes of the inertial system by observations of the regions of the stellar sky. It is convenient to characterize an error of the single determination of the orientation of the intrinsic coordinate system of the sensor by the vector of an infinitesimal turn of this system relative to its found position. Full-scale ground-based tests have shown that, for a resting sensor the root-mean-square values of the components of this vector along the axes of the intrinsic coordinate system lying in the plane of the sensor CCD matrix are less than 2″ and the component along the axis perpendicular to the matrix plane is characterized by the root-mean-square value of 15″. The joint processing of one-stage readings of several sensors installed on the same platform allows us to improve the indicated accuracy characteristics. In this paper, estimates of the accuracy of systems from BOKZ-M60 with two and four sensors performed from measurements carried out during the normal operation of these sensors on the Resurs-P satellite are given. Processing the measurements of the sensor system allowed us to increase the accuracy of determining the each of their orientations and to study random and systematic errors in these measurements.