Fine pointing from the stars

A few nights ago, we brought MinXSS flight model 1 up to the roof of LASP and pointed the Blue Canyon Technologies XACT star tracker to the stars. At about 1 AM, we got all the kinks in our RF link to the big Yagi antenna (also on the roof) worked out and we were able to command the spacecraft to do a high-precision hold of its current attitude using knowledge from the star tracker. It was tracking about 18 different stars of the ~40 that it could see — it compared those to its onboard catalog of all the stars and figured out where it was. Then we commanded it to point somewhere else and we watched it move. It was pretty cool to watch!

This is a very important mode for us on orbit. This is what we’ll be using to point very steadily at the Sun to take our observations. Only a few weeks left until we deliver flight model 1!