Feasibility study of SmallSat autonomous optical navigation in deep space with commercial DSLR sensors by beacon asteroid detection

The focus of this study is the feasibility of employing a commercial camera sensor as the autonomous optical navigation subsystem of a SmallSat on a deep space mission. For this analysis, a standard calibration procedure for a Canon EOS 6D Mark II camera was carried out by acquiring bias, dark, and flat-field frames, and experimenting with a range of exposure times and ISO settings. An attempt was made to understand and characterize the role of sensor temperature, which cannot be controlled in typical consumer camera systems. As a first step towards providing proof of concept for a future system deployable in a space environment and to advance the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of our demonstration, we investigated techniques allowing image acquisition without human interaction with the setup. This included software development to execute a transition from the use of the DigicamControl photography management program to cFS Basecamp, a lightweight environment designed to learn the full NASA core Flight System (cFS) and create app-based solutions, running on Linux. Additionally, automated beacon asteroid detection and autonomous observer position calculation were studied by implementing a dedicated Python program leveraging the Astrometry.net service and running locally, also under Linux.