SMART Wide Field of View Analog Sun Sensor

This paper deals with the design of a two-axis analog sun sensor for the university microsatellite SMART. Since the sensor is used for autonomous attitude determination both during station keeping and during attitude acquisition soon after the separation from the launcher, the sensor is required to have a large field of view (±120°´±60°) and a measurement accuracy better than 1°. In order to minimise the sensor output sensitivity to solar cell different electrical characteristics a sensor configuration is proposed that minimises the number of used solar cells and a theoretical analysis is performed to identify optimum criteria for solar cell selection and placement within the sensor optical head