Study on specification of attitude angle for small satellite by lunar outline extraction

In this paper, attitude angle detection system for small satellite at eclipse is described. Recently, small satellite mission is applied to various fields and small satellite mission at eclipse is planned. Then it is necessary that such small satellite keeps to control the satellite attitude for eclipse. In this paper, the authors propose moon outline extraction method to detect the attitude angle for eclipse instead of equipping star tracker and sun sensor. The moon outline extraction capturing from the satellite is used to detect solar direction and then attitude angle is detected by analyzing solar direction. Moreover to verify effectiveness of proposing method in this paper, substitution experiment on ground is executed, and the result is estimated.