Development of Small-Scale and Low-Power Attitude Determination System for Nanoscale Satellites by Infrared Earth-Imaging Sensors

Many space missions require that the spacecraft be oriented in a specific direction to operate correctly. ARKSAT 1, the University of Arkansas’s first satellite, is a 1U CubeSat designed to perform atmospheric spectroscopy from Low-Earth Orbit and as such requires precise attitude determination and control. Currently, attitude determination systems for 1U CubeSats with small space, low power, and low cost restrictions do not exist. This paper discusses the development of an earth-imaging infrared camera system for attitude determination on CubeSats and SmallSats that meets these requirements. Melexis MLX 90640 IR arrays and Microchip 8-bit microcontrollers are used to create infrared images of various test targets. The contrast of the resulting images is discussed along with recommendations for future development of the system

Group quantization of parametrized systems II. Pasting Hilbert spaces

The method of group quantization described in the preceeding paper I is extended so that it becomes applicable to some parametrized systems that do not admit a global transversal surface. A simple completely solvable toy system is studied that admits a pair of maximal transversal surfaces intersecting all orbits. The corresponding two quantum mechanics are constructed. The similarity of the canonical group actions in the classical phase spaces on the one hand and in the quantum Hilbert spaces on the other hand suggests how the two Hilbert spaces are to be pasted together. The resulting quantum theory is checked to be equivalent to that constructed directly by means of Dirac's operator constraint method. The complete system of partial Hamiltonians for any of the two transversal surfaces is chosen and the quantum Schr\"{o}dinger or Heisenberg pictures of time evolution are constructed.Comment: 35 pages, latex, no figure

Quantizations on the circle and coherent states

We present a possible construction of coherent states on the unit circle as configuration space. Our approach is based on Borel quantizations on S^1 including the Aharonov-Bohm type quantum description. The coherent states are constructed by Perelomov's method as group related coherent states generated by Weyl operators on the quantum phase space Z x S^1. Because of the duality of canonical coordinates and momenta, i.e. the angular variable and the integers, this formulation can also be interpreted as coherent states over an infinite periodic chain. For the construction we use the analogy with our quantization and coherent states over a finite periodic chain where the quantum phase space was Z_M x Z_M. The coherent states constructed in this work are shown to satisfy the resolution of unity. To compare them with canonical coherent states, also some of their further properties are studied demonstrating similarities as well as substantial differences.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, accepted in J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 45 (2012) for the Special issue on coherent states: mathematical and physical aspect