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Sensing for Space Applications
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Sensing for Space Applications

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2022) | Viewed by 16425

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Jeremy Straub

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58102, USA
Interests: artificial/computational Intelligence; autonomy applications in aerospace; cybersecurity; 3D printing command/control and assessment; educational assessment in computing disciplines
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Many space missions are launched specifically for remote sensing purposes. Some missions conduct Earth sensing, while others are launched to sense distant planets, moons, and asteroids. Some seek to sense far beyond the reach of mankind’s current spacecraft. Even missions where sensing is not the primary purpose use sensors for mission operations. This Special Issue focuses on the sensing needs, sensing solutions, and sensors used for these space applications, whether in orbit or on the surface of a distant celestial body.

Dr. Jeremy Straub
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • space
  • orbit
  • sensing
  • deep space
  • moon
  • Mars
  • asteroid
  • sensing systems
  • sensors

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 12831 KiB  
Article
Timepix3: Temperature Influence on Radiation Energy Measurement with Si Sensor
by Martin Urban, Ondrej Nentvich, Lukas Marek, Rene Hudec and Ladislav Sieger
Sensors 2023, 23(4), 2201; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s23042201 - 15 Feb 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2092
Abstract
The Timepix3 readout ASIC chip is a hybrid pixelated radiation detector, designed at CERN, which contains a 256 px × 256 px matrix. Each of the 65,536 radiation-sensitive pixels can record an incoming particle, its energy deposition or time of arrival and measure [...] Read more.
The Timepix3 readout ASIC chip is a hybrid pixelated radiation detector, designed at CERN, which contains a 256 px × 256 px matrix. Each of the 65,536 radiation-sensitive pixels can record an incoming particle, its energy deposition or time of arrival and measure them simultaneously. Since the detector is suitable for a wide range of applications from particle physics, national security and medicine to space science, it can be used in a wide range of temperatures. Until now, it has to be calibrated every time to the operating point of the application. This paper studies the possibility of energy measurement with Timepix3 equipped with a 500 m thick silicon sensor and MiniPIX readout interface in the temperatures between 10 ∘C and 70 ∘C with only one calibration. The detector has been irradiated by X-ray fluorescence photons in the energy range from 8 keV to 57 keV, and 31 keV to 81 keV photons from the 133Ba radioactive source. A deviation of 5% in apparent energy value may occur for a 10 ∘C change in temperature from the reference point, but, with the next temperature change, it can reach up to −30%. Moreover, Barium photons with an energy of 81 keV appear as deposited energy of only 55 keV at a detector temperature of 70 ∘C. An original compensation method that reduces the relative measurement error from −30% to less than 1% is presented in this paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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16 pages, 8446 KiB  
Article
Design of a Ultra-Stable Low-Noise Space Camera Based on a Large Target CMOS Detector and Image Data Analysis
by Chao Shen, Caiwen Ma and Wei Gao
Sensors 2022, 22(24), 9991; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22249991 - 18 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1822
Abstract
To detect faint target stars of 22nd magnitude and above, an astronomical exploration project requires its space camera’s readout noise to be less than 5e− with long-time working stability. Due to the limitation of satellite, the traditional CCD detector-based camera does not [...] Read more.
To detect faint target stars of 22nd magnitude and above, an astronomical exploration project requires its space camera’s readout noise to be less than 5e− with long-time working stability. Due to the limitation of satellite, the traditional CCD detector-based camera does not meet the requirements, including volume, weight, and power consumption. Thereby, a low-noise ultra-stable camera based on 9 K × 9 K large target surface CMOS is designed to meet the needs. For the first time, the low-noise ultra-stable camera based on CMOS detector will be applied to space astronomy projects, remote sensing imaging, resource survey, atmospheric and oceanic observation and other fields. In this paper, the design of the camera is introduced in detail, and the camera is tested for several rounds at −40 °C; it also undergoes further testing and data analysis. Tests proved super stability and that the readout noise is lower than 4.5e−. Dark current, nonlinearity and PTC indicators meet the requirements of the astronomical exploration project. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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22 pages, 12474 KiB  
Article
Multi-Satellite Relative Navigation Scheme for Microsatellites Using Inter-Satellite Radio Frequency Measurements
by Shiming Mo, Xiaojun Jin, Chen Lin, Wei Zhang, Zhaobin Xu and Zhonghe Jin
Sensors 2021, 21(11), 3725; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21113725 - 27 May 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2798
Abstract
The inter-satellite relative navigation method—based on radio frequency (RF) range and angle measurements—offers good autonomy and high precision, and has been successfully applied to two-satellite formation missions. However, two main challenges occur when this method is applied to multi-microsatellite formations: (i) the implementation [...] Read more.
The inter-satellite relative navigation method—based on radio frequency (RF) range and angle measurements—offers good autonomy and high precision, and has been successfully applied to two-satellite formation missions. However, two main challenges occur when this method is applied to multi-microsatellite formations: (i) the implementation difficulty of the inter-satellite RF angle measurement increases significantly as the number of satellites increases; and (ii) there is no high-precision, scalable RF measurement scheme or corresponding multi-satellite relative navigation algorithm that supports multi-satellite formations. Thus, a novel multi-satellite relative navigation scheme based on inter-satellite RF range and angle measurements is proposed. The measurement layer requires only a small number of chief satellites, and a novel distributed multi-satellite range measurement scheme is adopted to meet the scalability requirement. An inter-satellite relative navigation algorithm for multi-satellite formations is also proposed. This algorithm achieves high-precision relative navigation by fusing the algorithm and measurement layers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme requires only three chief satellites to perform inter-satellite angle measurements. Moreover, with the typical inter-satellite measurement accuracy and an inter-satellite distance of around 1 km, the proposed scheme achieves a multi-satellite relative navigation accuracy of ~30 cm, which is about the same as the relative navigation accuracy of two-satellite formations. Furthermore, decreasing the number of chief satellites only slightly degrades accuracy, thereby significantly reducing the implementation difficulty of multi-satellite RF angle measurements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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17 pages, 7696 KiB  
Article
Information Extraction and Population Estimates of Settlements from Historic Corona Satellite Imagery in the 1960s
by Dimitris Stratoulias and George Grekousis
Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2423; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21072423 - 01 Apr 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2624
Abstract
The Corona satellite program was a historic reconnaissance mission which provided high spatial resolution panchromatic images during the Cold War era. Nevertheless, and despite the historic uniqueness and importance of the dataset, efforts to extract tangible information from this dataset have primarily focused [...] Read more.
The Corona satellite program was a historic reconnaissance mission which provided high spatial resolution panchromatic images during the Cold War era. Nevertheless, and despite the historic uniqueness and importance of the dataset, efforts to extract tangible information from this dataset have primarily focused on visual interpretation. More sophisticated approaches have been either hampered or unrealized, often justified by the primitive quality of this early satellite product. In the current study we attempt to showcase the usability of Corona imagery outside the context of visual interpretation. Using a 1968 Corona image acquired over the city municipality of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, we reconstruct a panchromatic 1.8 m spatial resolution georegistered image with a relative displacement Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 6.616 (for x dimension) and 1.886 (for y dimension) and employ segmentation and texture analysis to discern agricultural parcels and settlements’ footprints. Population statistics of this past era are retrieved from national census and related to settlements’ footprints. An exponential relationship between the two variables was identified by applying a semi-log regression. The high adjusted R2 value found (76.54%) indicates that Corona images offer a unique opportunity for population data analysis of the past. Overall, we showcase that the Corona images’ usability extends beyond the visual interpretation, and features of interest extracted through image analysis can be subsequently used for further geographical and historical research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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17 pages, 3090 KiB  
Article
Improved Accuracy of a Single-Slit Digital Sun Sensor Design for CubeSat Application Using Sub-Pixel Interpolation
by Fuat Kaan Diriker, Alexander Frias, Ki Hwan Keum and Regina S. K. Lee
Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1472; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21041472 - 20 Feb 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2998
Abstract
In recent years, we have seen significant improvements in the digital sun sensor (DSS) design enabled by advanced micro-systems fabrication and optical sensing technologies. In this paper, we propose a simple single-slit DSS concept with improved accuracy using sub-pixel interpolation. In considering the [...] Read more.
In recent years, we have seen significant improvements in the digital sun sensor (DSS) design enabled by advanced micro-systems fabrication and optical sensing technologies. In this paper, we propose a simple single-slit DSS concept with improved accuracy using sub-pixel interpolation. In considering the DSS design, we focused on several characteristics of the sun sensor, including field-of-view, sensor accuracy, complexity, and computational requirements. First, the optimal mask design was determined based on the simple geometry of the slit size, mask height and pixel width. Then, a two-step pixel read-out algorithm was implemented for sub-pixel level interpolation to determine the illumination ratio using 1-, 2-, 4- and 8-bit readouts. Lastly, the improved DSS was integrated with typical CubeSat, commercial-grade attitude sensors suite and a simple TRIAD method to determine the attitude of a CubeSat in LEO. Compared to standard 1-bit read-out mode (0.32 deg RMSE), 8-bit DSS achieves better than 0.01 deg RMSE. In a CubeSat scenario, improvements in attitude knowledge and control accuracy are marginal when using TRIAD, due to the significantly lower accuracy in other CubeSat-scale sensors (magnetometer, for example). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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23 pages, 717 KiB  
Article
Universal Verification Platform and Star Simulator for Fast Star Tracker Design
by Victor Hugo Schulz, Gabriel Mariano Marcelino, Laio Oriel Seman, Jeferson Santos Barros, Sangkyun Kim, Mengu Cho, Gabriel Villarrubia González, Valderi Reis Quietinho Leithardt and Eduardo Augusto Bezerra
Sensors 2021, 21(3), 907; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21030907 - 29 Jan 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3068
Abstract
Developing star trackers quickly is non-trivial. Achieving reproducible results and comparing different algorithms are also open problems. In this sense, this work proposes the use of synthetic star images (a simulated sky), allied with the standardized structure of the Universal Verification Methodology as [...] Read more.
Developing star trackers quickly is non-trivial. Achieving reproducible results and comparing different algorithms are also open problems. In this sense, this work proposes the use of synthetic star images (a simulated sky), allied with the standardized structure of the Universal Verification Methodology as the base of a design approach. The aim is to organize the project, speed up the development time by providing a standard verification methodology. Future rework is reduced through two methods: a verification platform that us shared under a free software licence; and the layout of Universal Verification Methodology enforces reusability of code through an object-oriented approach. We propose a black-box structure for the verification platform with standard interfaces, and provide examples showing how this approach can be applied to the development of a star tracker for small satellites, targeting a system-on-a-chip design. The same test benches were applied to both early conceptual software-only implementations, and later optimized software-hardware hybrid systems, in a hardware-in-the-loop configuration. This test bench reuse strategy was interesting also to show the regression test capability of the developed platform. Furthermore, the simulator was used to inject specific noise, in order to evaluate the system under some real-world conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications)
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