Centroid and Path determination of Planets for Deep Space Autonomous Optical Navigation

Autonomous space navigation might be the future of deep space navigation as ground-radio based navigation from earth is largely limited in terms of accuracy. The automation of interplanetary space-crafts would become more demanding for future deep space missions. Optical Navigation offers a method for autonomous navigation with the use of optical navigation sensor and a navigation camera on board. The objective of this project is to provide an algorithm for detection of celestial bodies (planets, satellites, etc.) and also predict its path. This is performed by use of a set of filters including the sharpening filter and the ring filter followed by least square method to find the center and radius of the planet/satellite. The algorithm is tested and verified on raw images. The path prediction of the celestial body is performed by taking a certain number of samples and using least square method to predict its path.