NEAR's Star Camera

Star Camera

The star camera is an instrument on the NEAR spacecraft that will be used to infer the attitude of the spacecraft. The attitude refers to the spacecraft's orientation and direction. Bright stars are used as a map for the star camera to record the spacecraft's course and position.

The star camera will serve as one of the tools to provide information necessary to calculate the density of Eros. The attitude data from the star camera, along with stereo images from MSI and distance measurements from the Laser Rangefinder, will provide information on the shape and volume of Eros. Besides volume, the other information needed for computation of the density is mass, which will be derived from the orbital period and altitude of the orbit obtained from the radio science experiment, images from MSI, and distance measurements from the Laser Rangefinder.

Shown below are components of the star camera.

[Star Camera Components]

Back to click-on spacecraft exploration

[NO FRAMES]Table of Contents for no frames/no JAVA browsing.
[LMGFP Home Page] Contact Steve Bowser (slbowser@umd5.umd.edu) or
Joy Maloney (jmaloney@umd5.umd.edu) for further information.