OPSE metrology system onboard of the PROBA3 mission of ESA

In recent years, ESA has assessed several mission involving formation flying (FF). The great interest in this topics is mainly driven by the need for moving from ground to space the location of next generation astronomical telescopes overcoming most of the critical problems, as example the construction of huge baselines for interferometry. In this scenario, metrology systems play a critical role. PROBA3 is an ESA technology mission devoted to in-orbit demonstration of the FF technique, with two satellites, an occulter and a main satellite housing a coronagraph named ASPIICS, kept at an average inter-distance by about 144m, with micron scale accuracy. The guiding proposal is to test several metrology solution for spacecraft alignment, with the important scientific return of having observation of Corona at never reached before angular field. The Shadow Position Sensors (SPS), and the Optical Position Emitters Sensors (OPSE) are two of the systems used for FF fine tracking. The SPS are finalized to monitor the position of the two spacecraft with respect to the Sun and are discussed in dedicated papers presented in this conference. The OPSE will monitor the relative position of the two satellites and consists of 3 emitters positioned on the rear surface of the occulter, that will be observed by the coronagraph itself. By following the evolution of the emitters images at the focal plane the alignment of the two spacecrafts is retrieved via dedicated centroiding algoritm. We present an overview of the OPSE system and of the centroiding approach