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GSoC ideas (2020)

Dr. Juno Woods edited this page Jan 19, 2021 · 1 revision

These ideas are works in progress. Feel free to add or revise!

Open Star Tracker

Star trackers take pictures of the stars, and from unique star patterns, attempt to determine the attitude of a spacecraft.

Mentor: Andrew Tennenbaum, Sam Gawthrop

URL: http://github.com/openlunar/openstartracker

  • Implement contours method for GPU, or use some other edge detection method available in GPU, for identifying stars in an image
  • Improve C/C++ code, rewrite of Python code for memory efficiency
  • Develop test to select field-of-view to achieve a desired measurement update frequency
  • Produce algorithm to identify optimal de-focus for a given camera/optics (for subpixel accuracy)

Starfield and Lunar Simulators

There are a handful of simulators we need in order to test spacecraft optics.

The first of these is a starfield simulator. We want to develop a simple application that can run on a smart phone, placed in front of the star tracker camera, and be used to test a star tracker.

The second is a lunar renderer:

  • Build renderer using LRO digital terrain models that draws the moon, with ability to control sun position.
  • Renderer should produce high-fidelity images that can be matched to real lunar images using OpenCV descriptors.
  • Far-away render during earth–moon transit
  • Medium-distance render for low lunar orbit (100km down to 15km)
  • Stub out landing renderings for future development?
  • C/C++ with Python API

Mentors: Aaron Goldstein, John Woods

SpiceyPy: Expose buried functions

Mentor: Andrew Annex

URL: https://github.com/AndrewAnnex/SpiceyPy

  • SPICE has a lot of functions which aren't documented in the C interface but are nonetheless useful. Examples include the file write utilities and also various geometric functions. We want these exposed to Python in SpiceyPy.
  • Handling of SPICE errors needs improvement. It gives a truncated error message in a lot of cases and it's difficult to track down the actual cause of the error without going into the C code. Error handling needs to be refactored.

Flight Software GN&C Library

Think of this library as containing the base API for the spacecraft. They tell the spacecraft important information, such as where the sun is located, how much of the moon is visible, the rotation of the earth, and so on.

Mentor: John WoodsSam Gawthrop

  • Porting some SPICE-like functionalities to simple extractable functions that are optimized for flight software (no dynamic memory, fast, efficient):
    • Frame transforms
    • Solar ephemeris
    • Lunar ephemeris
    • Camera frustum intersection with ellipsoid
    • Earth magnetic field models

Lunar Trajectory

Mentor: John Woods

URL: https://github.com/openlunar/trajectory

Open Architecture

Mentors: Morgan Martinez, Jessy Kate Schingler

  • Open source roadmapping and visualization tool that can switch between timeline and network displays, with drill down capability.  
  • An open source tool for delegated experts to review and categorize content submissions.