ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

For satellites to work their technological wonders, they must be equipped with an AOCS that can safely steer them through the rigors of the space environment and can also ensure the mission conditions are reliably met until the end of life. Its stand particularly true for Telecommunication commercial satellites whose mission is to fulfill the telecom needs of hundreds of millions people with Quality of Service and HORUS will provide a yardstick against which to evaluate autonomous CMOS Star Trackers for the Telecom market. Sodern has already brought to the market the high end autonomous Star Tracker HYDRA with a 100 + units/year manufacturing capacity and the versatile low cost Star Tracker AURIGA with a 2000+ units/year manufacturing capacity. Although these centralized and autonomous Star Tracker designs are quite different from one another, the lessons learned when designing each type have revealed important synergies between the two environments that have helped to guide HORUS's design. Indeed, HORUS is an autonomous Star Tracker whose Design to Cost approach has been paramount into reaching the performances expected by the market while responding to the ongoing price pressure in the industry. This has been achieved by an in-house integrated product team endeavor involving system design, optical design, software design, design for manufacturing and the supply chain, leveraging HYDRA's performances oriented aspects and AURIGA's cost oriented mindset. The paper will provide a three pronged introduction to HORUS. Firstly, a hardware breakdown structure will be put forth and described, along with a clear qualification status of the equipment. HORUS full operating modes will also be explained. Secondly, HORUS will be described from an architecture standpoint in such a way that HORUS' reliability can be detailed and discussed. Thirdly, HORUS's major design drivers will be reviewed and discussed along with a thorough presentation of its operational performances and of the design choices ultimately selected. The paper will demonstrate how HORUS will arguably become the industry benchmark upon its inception in 2018.