Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor designing and building the Orion spacecraft for NASA. Having completed its first high orbital test flight in December 2014, Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) will be Orion’s next test flight. This flight will demonstrate the spacecraft’s capabilities for enabling Orion’s first manned mission, Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), in 2021.

Jena-Optronik will be part of this advanced space mission developing and supplying the ASTRO APS Star Sensors for the attitude and orbit control systems for both missions, EM-1 and EM-2. 

“We are looking forward to be a part of this pioneering mission with our ASTRO APS star sensor.  We are able to contribute our know-how to this fascinating mission.  This is the first time since the Soviet MIR-space station that star sensors from Jena-Optronik are part of a manned mission”, comments Dr. Boris Pradarutti, head of star sensor at the Jena-Optronik GmbH.

Active Pixel Sensor Performance

ASTRO APS is an autonomous star tracker with the most advanced radiation hard CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) detector technology for long-term missions.

The technical key parameters of the APS based star trackers are the low mass budget and the low power consumption. These data define a new level of compactness compared to state-of-the-art CCD-based star sensors:

• Lifetime of more than 18 years
• Radiation design for 25 years GEO environment
• APS design with space qualified CMOS detectors
• Full performance with moon in the field of view
• Very robust against solar flare environment and false star objects