Analyzing and developing precise pointing analysis tool to reduce image distortion in Earth Observation satellites

Abstract: With growing space market and entry of more private companies into the industry, there arecompanies and stakeholders who would like to have a high order of accuracy mission outputrequirements. These requirements vary from mission to mission. This simply means that if acompany wants an Earth observation mission, the main requirement to be fulfilled would be tohave the highest resolution of image possible. In order to achieve this, the satellite carrying the camera payload would be required to bepointed in the right direction with utmost accuracy. For a satellite to be pointed in the rightdirection, the noise generated by the sensors and actuators on-board, which determines theattitude of the satellite and helps in changing it, should be minimized. The aim of this thesisis to design a method which could help in determining the right components to be procuredso that the pointing requirements of the satellite are fulfilled. This objective is achieved bydesigning algorithms in python and MATLAB. The values generated by these algorithms, ultimately describe the type of sensor or actuator to be procured. Finally, the noise generated bysuch individual components act as pointing error source and then PEET is used to translatethese error sources to platform error, to generate a pointing budget and ensure that all pointingrequirements are satisfied.