Inertial Stellar Compass (ISC) is an instrument concept for an advanced navigation system designed to allow spacecraft of the future to operate more autonomously.
The ISC is small in size and consumes low power to operate. ISC is a proposed instrument of
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
, part of
New Millennium program
New Millennium Program (NMP) was a NASA project with focus on engineering validation of new technologies for space applications. Funding for the program was eliminated from the FY2009 budget by the 110th United States Congress, effectively leading ...
's
Space Technology 6 project, and currently under development at
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.
The instrument functions with a combination of a miniaturized
star tracker
A star tracker is an optical device that measures the positions of stars using photocells or a camera.
As the positions of many stars have been measured by astronomers to a high degree of accuracy, a star tracker on a satellite or spacecraft may ...
and
gyroscopes. It uses a wide field-of-view active pixel star camera and a micro electromechanical system to determine the real-time stellar
attitude (orientation) of the spacecraft. It has a mass of and requires 3.5 W power.
See also
*
TacSat-2
TacSat-2 is the first in a series of U.S. military experimental technology and communication satellites.TacSat-2 (also known as JWS-D1 ((Joint Warfighting Space-Demonstrator 1) or RoadRunner) was an experimental satellite built by the USAF's A ...
References
New Millennium Program
Spacecraft instruments
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