Blog
Sun illumination test
The weather in Belgium has been depressing the last few months, so we thought it would be a good idea to bring some sunshine into our office. Not metaphorically by eating ice cream or listening to the Beach Boys, but by carrying out tests with a Sun simulator.
We carried out long duration sun illumination tests and successfully verified that our Sagitta star tracker keeps working perfectly, even after staring directly into the Sun for days on end. This robustness saves satellite operators a lot of trouble, as they do not need to actively steer the satellite to keep the Sun out of the star tracker field of view.
Thanks to ESA for the support.
New star tracker: Twinkle
Arcsec's Sagitta star tracker has a little brother! He's called Twinkle, weighs 40 grams and his vision is confirmed to be excellent!
It is an ideal unit for CubeSats, even allowing to incorporate multiple star trackers in one satellite. Its small size, mass and power consumption make the Twinkle a great star tracker for larger satellites as well.
Despite being as small as a matchbox car, our Twinkle star tracker has all the functionality you can find in larger star trackers:
- Fully autonomous lost in space acquisition
- Attitude tracking at rates up to 5 Hz
- Full image downlink capability
- Optics and electronics are radiation shielded
- Built in baffle with a sun exclusion angle of 60 deg (half cone)
Find out more on the product page!