The APS based smart sun sensor

The Galileo Avionica's heritage on attitude sensors for space platforms is well based and can take advantage of more than three hundred successfully flown instruments. In order to maintain the necessary technological skills, Galileo Avionica is developing, within European Space Agency contracts and internal R&D studies, new generation Attitude sensors and Navigation Cameras based on the use of CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) detectors. Further, the experience gained with APS can be easily applied to smart cameras for planetary exploration. In this frame, a new precision sun sensor, called SMART SUN SENSOR (SSS), which uses no optics to sense the sun angle in two axes, has been developed by Galileo Avionica Space Equipment B.U. SSS has a large dynamic range and thus combines the functions traditionally performed by separate fine and coarse sun sensors in order to cover a wide range of applications. It finds use on Commercial, Earth Observation and Scientific satellites during transfer orbit manoeuvres as well as for on station operations. SSS provides medium/high accuracy, wide field of view, high reliability, radiation tolerance, small size, and low mass.