Design of an experimental star tracking payload and environmental testing of CanX-1

CanX-1 (Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment), which was launched on June 30th, 2003, is the first Canadian picosatellite experiment started at the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. CanX-1 was designed such that students design, build, test and operate the satellite within a two-year time frame. The objective of CanX-1 is to verify the functionality of several electronic technologies in orbital space. CanX-1 includes two CMOS imagers for star tracking and Earth imaging. Developing a small, low power CMOS star tracker will help future small satellites to achieve fine three axis pointing. This thesis focuses on the development and validation of the star tracker, including hardware design, star pattern recognition algorithms and attitude estimation methods. Also, this thesis describes the functional and environmental testing performed on CanX-1 to verify that the satellite can survive the launch and function in the harsh space environment.